News

4 September 2020 |

Wall Racing aims to keep international-owned Hondas on track

Wall Racing will run as many as four Honda Civic Typer R TCR cars, if the right drivers can be found as the series gears itself to return to race tracks in the near future.

Regular Wall Racing Honda drivers Tony D’Alberto and John Martin are locked in to resume their quest for TCR success, while the two other Hondas in the Wall Racing workshop, owned by international racer Paul Ip, are also based at the team’s Sydney race shop.

Ip, a successful businessman and long-time race team owner and driver, is based in Canada and due to the uncertainty and complexity around international travel in the short term, will be unlikely to compete in the TCR Australia Series as he had intended.

Instead, Ip and team owner David Wall are keen to keep the two Ip-owned Civics on track, using local drivers.

“We have four cars here in the workshop. Paul’s cars are here, but they are being put on the table for us to put deals together to see if we can run them in particular events until he can come here and drive one of them himself,” Wall said.

“We’ve definitely got our two cars for Tony and John ready to go, and if the right offer and the right driver is on the table to drive one of the other cars, then we’d entertain that idea, for sure.

“It’s a long term project for Paul to come and do a season or two here, so hopefully when it all kicks off, Paul can drive his car and we can go from there.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic struck Australia in March, the Wall Racing team has used its time to get its ‘house in order’, with the team effecting many tweaks to the Honda Civic Type Rs, aimed to improve performance and usability.

“There’s been a couple of stages of items that the boys have been ticking off since the our test day at Winton,” Wall said.

“There’s been some preparation things that we wanted to get done. There’s been the mandatory upgrades, dictated from (Honda’s homologation team) JAS Motorsport and WSC (global TCR owners) and then there’s been the wish list that the boys wanted to upgrade when time permitted. When it became apparent that we were going to have some time on our hands, they’ve been going over them and getting things in place.

“We did a test at Wakefield Park, which was the first step of the improvements, and then we look at what we liked and didn’t like, and now we hope to further them a little more before the first round.”