V8 Supercar Chairman Tony Cochrane remains focused on combing the category and TEGA boards despite the team’s representative group recently seeing the last of its embattled former chief Dr John Hewson.

Having only commenced his chairmanship in April this year, Hewson is believed to have resigned after unsuccessfully proposing to teams an array of changes he felt necessary for the organisation’s future.

Cochrane, though, is confident the category is still moving in the right direction despite the hiccup, with nothing stopping a merger of boards in the not-too-distant future.

"I think that, regrettably, a lot of this year, a lot of time, has been wasted on internal politics rather than improving the show," says Cochrane, "and I’m much more interested in people that want to work for the collective good of improving the show.

"Combining the two entities into one was an idea a long time before (Hewson) or anybody else came along. The facts of the matter are the business and the people that have got skin in the game, that’s the 21 team owners and SEL, all want an amalgamated seamless organisation."

As V8X reported last issue, Cochrane confirmed the move will put anywhere up to $2 million back into the coffers of TEGA – and hence the teams – and believes a realistic expectation for the new joint board to be in place is about six months.

"Personally, I would like to think that we could have it sorted and in place by perhaps February of next year, prior to the start of the racing season," says Cochrane.

Meanwhile, things behind the boardroom door remain tense with TeamVodafone boss Roland Dane becoming the latest board member to resign before Bathurst. Dane has been known in paddock circles to be disgruntled by the continuous internal political bickering and becomes the third person to step down from either the TEGA or V8 Supercar board this year, following Mark Skaife (HRT) in January and Steve Chalker (DJR) in July.

A replacement was to be discussed at the TEGA AGM held in early November.

– Filippa Guarna

Power Play FPR boss: old-school V8s are too costly TIME is running out the 5.0-litre V8 Ford and Holden powerplants, according to FPR boss Tim Edwards. Endangered species? The pushrod V8. Edwards said the cost of maintaining the old-school cast iron engines was a significant expense teams could not afford in the long term and that the sport needed to look to modern, more fuel efficient engines to cut costs. "We’d be naive to think that in 10-20 years time we’d still be using these same cast iron pushrod engines," says Edwards. "There has to a point in time, and I don’t know whether that is in five, 10 years or 20 years, when we change to a more modern engine that can potentially run on a more environmentally friendly fuels. "It can still be a V8 but you have to remember the DNA for these engines with its pushrods was developed in the Eisenhower era in the 1950s. So we’re probably wearing it a bit thin now. "You can buy modern overhead cam all-alloy engines out of the United States that are already producing 550 horsepower. That’s not too far away from where we are at the moment. "You have a similar amount of horsepower, so that means similar lap times. They’re going to sound the same, the weight is neither here nor there because these are cast iron engine blocks we’re using now so it would be potentially lighter." – Gavin McGrath