Supercars 2024: Blanchard Racing Team parts ways with second-year driver Aaron Love after one round
Blanchard Racing Team has explained its decision to part ways with second-year driver Aaron Love just one round into the 2025 Supercars championship, and quickly confirmed his replacement.
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Blanchard Racing Team boss Tim Blanchard says the Ford squad tried to “hang it out” for as long as it could with Aaron Love before cutting ties with the second-year Supercars driver just one round into the 2025 championship.
BRT announced on Monday it had made an immediate change to its driver-line up ahead of this week’s round at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, parting ways with the 22-year-old from Perth.
Love’s 2024 endurance co-driver and Super2 series runner-up Aaron Cameron will step into the seat for the Melbourne round and “the next few events” before the team formalised a replacement for the rest of the year.
BRT said in a short statement that it had “mutually agreed to part ways” with Love, who has faced a tough initiation to his Supercars career.
The move comes after Love crashed into his BRT teammate James Courtney in a bizarre qualifying incident in the season-opening round at Sydney Motorsport Park last month.
Love finished last among the full-time Supercars drivers in his rookie campaign in last year’s championship, with his best result a 12th-place finish in the final race at Albert Park.
Blanchard said “honest conversations” about Love’s results had led to the split.
“No one would be satisfied with how it has been going the last few events, so we kind of started a few conversations as to what the best way forward was,” Blanchard said.
“Once we kind of got into those conversations it was decided that the best option was to part company.
“For whatever reason the results weren’t coming, so I guess we had to have some honest conversations about options there were to move forward and we couldn’t really find a way to keep things going and improve the results.”
Asked if the crash in Sydney between teammates had been the last straw, Blanchard said it was not just one incident which had led to the decision.
“Obviously that was far from an ideal situation (teammates crashing), but I don’t think it was one particular issue or incident that led to this,” the team principal and co-owner said.
“It has been an ongoing (issue). We have been struggling for a long period of time and that was what was more driving the conversation more than any one particular incident.”
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Blanchard conceded the team’s move to a two-car operation last season had compounded Love’s performances, which it had addressed with the driver at the end of last year amid speculation over his seat for 2025.
But Blanchard said the team could no longer continue on its path after an opening round when Love finished 24th, 16th and last in Sydney.
“We had quite a few conversations at the end of last year, which I am sure everyone does with all their drivers in terms of how the season went,” Blanchard said.
“Both of us raised a number of areas where we think we could improve moving into this year. Obviously it was a lot tougher last year than we would have liked and expanding to a two-car team and Aaron having his first year in the main series kind of made the mountain a bit too high for us, unfortunately. That’s just the way it goes.
“But I think if you look at Aaron’s junior career it was quite impressive, so I’m sure at the right time it (that form) will come out and be seen but we’ve tried to hang it out as long as we could to get to that point and unfortunately we’ve had to make the change.”
Blanchard said 2024 co-driver Cameron, 25, was the logical choice to replace Love and said the team was eager to keep investing in young talent.
“We are keen to keep nurturing young talent. As a growing team, having young hungry drivers is probably the best solution for us at this time when we have got ‘JC’ in the other car,” Blanchard said.
“Given the short notice of what has happened, ‘Camo’ knows the team well, he worked with the race engineer in Super2 last year, drove with us in the enduros and drove the car at the test day the other day, so he is well-integrated into our team already so it is a bit of a logical choice for us.
“He was contracted to drive for us for the enduros (this year). We have spoken to him about filling in for the grand prix and the next few events.
“We’ll look to formalise (the seat for rest of the year) over the coming weeks.”
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