Russell Ingall’s V8 Supercars comeback will continue after the veteran agreed to replace injured star Chaz Mostert for Prodrive Racing in next weekend’s Gold Coast 600.
Ingall, who retired from full-time driving last year, will step into the #6 Falcon on a one-time only basis to race alongside Cameron Waters following Mostert’s horrific crash in practice at last weekend’s Bathurst 1000.
Mostert’s suffered season-ending injuries in the spectacular incident and Prodrive were scrambling to replace him until Ingall came to their aid.
The 51-year-old has been given the green light by his employers Fox Sports to race on the Gold Coast, where his recent experience in the Next Generation chassis and of the track itself will come in handy.
“Thankfully with the format of racing, when the races are actually on myself, Mark Skaife and Jessica hand over to the commentary team so it’s actually worked in quite good that they’ve allowed me to do this,” said Ingall.
“It brings more of an insight into what happens behind the scenes with some of these top race teams and obviously Prodrive at the moment is the top team and it’s the one everyone’s chasing so it’s going to be good to actually get in and find out the reasons why they’re doing all this winning.
“It’s going to be great a part of that to jump in with Cam and also give an evaluation on that because obviously Cam’s hot property at the moment and I know how he feels when I got into the championship out of the gate.
“It can be daunting. Hopefully I can give him some advice on both sides of the seat.
“There’d be no reason at all why we couldn’t get a pretty reasonable result; definitely a top five result.”
After recently returning from retirement to race alongside Jack Perkins at Sandown and Bathurst, PRA team principal Tim Edwards said Ingall was the best possible candidate for the position.
“It’s great to have Russell on board. He has a lot of experience at the Gold Coast circuit which was what we were looking for,” Edwards said.
“Our aim is to keep our lead in the team’s championship so that means avoiding a DNF next week. Russell has also worked with our car #6 race engineer Adam De Borre so they already know how the other operates which will make the process that much easier.”
