Red Bull Holden Racing Team boss Roland Dane’s family ties to SA
Motorsport has a big history in South Australia, but there is one Supercars team boss that has a big history of his own in our race-loving state.
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South Australia not only can lay claim to the best motorsport facility in Australia and the highest number of Supercar drivers on the grid per capita, but also the category’s most successful team owner — Roland Dane.
The team principal of the Red Bull Holden Racing Team and majority owner of Triple Eight Race Engineering has South Australian blood in his veins, as his grandfather was born here, while his parents also met and fell in love in Adelaide.
Dane was born in Northern Ireland in the 1950s and moved to Australia in 2003, settling in Queensland where the racing team is based, and he became an Australian citizen in 2016.
But he said he always has had a strange affinity with Adelaide and South Australia
“There was definitely a bit of a draw,” he said.
“To look at the city, flying in there and knowing that my grandfather was born there, when it looks like a very different world, it does fascinate me.
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“The connection’s there, the different people that I know there now, the whole level of different histories that aren’t necessarily to do with me but a whole variety of people coming together from all corners of the world there, it fascinates me.
“The history and the fact that it wasn’t a place that convicts went to — it was a little bit different to most places.
“It had this big German presence, from the early 20th century, the late 1800s, the early 1900s; it’s different to what we’ve had in Queensland.”
Dane’s great-great-grandfather worked as the first postmaster in Mount Gambier in the 1860s, and his great-grandparents were married in Laura.
In 1892, his grandfather William Surrey Dane was born in Adelaide, which also was the birthplace of his great-uncles.
“They went back to fight in the Great War — one didn’t survive and the other two, including my grandfather, decided to stay and try to make their fortunes in London,” he said.
That his grandfather did, serving as the proprietor of a newspaper and then heading up Odhams Press, a famous book publisher in the day, he said.
Dane’s father David then moved to Adelaide in the 1950s after finishing his medical studies in England.
“He wanted to see where he came from,” Dane said.
“He worked in Adelaide and met my mother there.
“My mother was a widow, her husband had died at Woomera during the nuclear testing program, he was bitten by a scorpion or snake in the middle of nowhere and couldn’t get treatment in time.
“She was then a widow in Adelaide, she met my father there, and they went back to Northern Ireland in 1955 and I was born over there.”
Still, the connection to South Australia remained, as Dane’s godparents were a couple who lived in Adelaide, so he made regular visits to the city.
Now he returns twice a year for the two Supercars events, held in Adelaide and Tailem Bend.
“The visit to South Australia is something that is not just me, it’s the whole team, that looks forward to, whether we are going there to go to the Adelaide 500 in March or coming back again in August for The Bend,” Dane said.
“It’s very easy to see the truth in the research that shows SA has the highest number of motorsport fans per head of population of anywhere in the country, it’s evident when we go there.”
Of The Bend Motorsport Park, he has a bit of pride as a deep-down South Australian.
“It’s a world-class facility,” he said.
“I’m fans of the Shahin family and what they’ve done there.
“The fact that they’ve put their money where their mouth is, they said they were going to do it and, unlike many people, followed through and created a world-class motorsport precinct, not just something for Supercars to go and play with.”
He predicted dust issues which plagued some drivers, particularly in early sessions at the first OTR SuperSprint last year, would not be so this year.
“It doesn’t take that much dust to upset a Supercar on the circuit and reduce the grip levels,” he said.
“(Last year) it had been a construction site for quite a long period of time. There was a lot of dust.
“The place has had a year to mature.
“It’s still a pretty tricky place and it’s a compromise between the set-up of the car for a long straight versus some high-speed corners where you need more downforce on the car than on the straight — that can lead to people struggling to keep the car on the track all the way around.
“The track will be clean this year and more mature.”