Skaife ‘immensely proud’ to be guiding Supercars

Mark Skaife is perhaps the epitome of a person emotionally invested in the Repco Supercars Championship.

Supercars has been Skaife’s life for decades, carving out one of the all-time great careers behind the wheel as a five-time champion and six-time Bathurst 1000 winner.

From there, he’s dabbled in team ownership and broader advising, and most prominently in broadcast commentary.

Now, after exhaustive efforts, he’s a key figure in the RACE (Racing Australia Consolidated Enterprises Ltd) consortium which has purchased Supercars from private equity firm Archer Capital as well as minor stakeholders, the teams themselves.

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Skaife sits on the RACE board and will have a role to play in dealing with the new-look Supercars Commission.

Month after month, Skaife remained quiet about his involvement in the looming ownership bid – until this week, when Shane Howard was announced as the championship’s new CEO, replacing Sean Seamer.

Quizzed about his feelings on RACE having prevailed to take on the responsibility of giving Supercars some much-needed new blood and fresh investment, Skaife opened up.

“It’s something that we’re immensely proud of,” the 54-year-old said.

“We recognise that the caretakers of this sport are so important to the future of the game, and the method of the RACE group getting the investors together to be able to acquire not only from Archer but from teams, the 100 percent ownership structure, is a very exciting thing for the sport.

“The thing that we said to investors the whole time through was that our ethos is to reset and re-energise the sport.

“Barclay and his business acumen and connections, together with our connection with TLA, together with our stakeholders, and most importantly together with our leadership group, it’s a very, very strong organisation.”

Skaife praised the way Supercars has thus far navigated COVID-related hurdles, and believes the foundations are there to strive for new heights.

“For Shane to step up from COO to CEO is a really powerful statement that we’ve got very, very safe hands on the wheel,” he added.

“But don’t just think about Shane with that: the leadership group of Cam Price, Anthony Hogarth, Nathan Prendergast, Adrian Burgess, Jamie Black, there’s a big group of people in the back of this that form a very, very strong leadership group.

“Barclay has been very good with them during this transition period to ensure that they’re empowered and we have faith in them.

“It’s a very, very good business and it’s a great motor racing category. We’re all really proud of what we put on in terms of entertainment and our racing quality.

“So, this is a big step for everybody and we’re really excited about the future.”

RACE’s first season at the helm of Supercars kicks off with the Repco Newcastle 500 on March 4-6.