CARL Faux has revealed the next chapter of his motorsport career will take him to the NASCAR Cup Series in the United States.
The Brit last week finished up at Walkinshaw TWG Racing, where he has been a pivotal figure in its Supercars resurgence – initially as a technical consultant, then as technical director, and for the past three years as team principal.
Faux’s first event for the Clayton organisation was the 2017 Bathurst 1000, where it collected its best result of an otherwise miserable season.
Fast forward to now and it is Toyota’s flagship team, and has Chaz Mostert currently in the process of vying for back-to-back drivers’ championships.
V8 Sleuth broke the news in July that Faux would be finishing up after this year’s Great Race. He has now confirmed that he’ll be remaining within the broader Toyota family, joining Legacy Motor Club as a principal performance engineer.
The Jimmie Johnson-owned team is expanding to three full-time cars for the 2027 Cup Series, with Faux to bolster its brains trust.
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Initial talks with Toyota Racing Development began when Supercars and its homologation teams went wind tunnel testing late last year.
“I just want to do things that are fulfilling,” Faux told V8 Sleuth.
“That was my primary objective, to find a role that I could be fulfilled with the work that I do. Fortunately, Andy (Graves of TRD) put me in touch with one of the teams over there, which was Legacy Motor Club.
“I went over there for Sonoma earlier this year, met up with those guys there, spent the weekend with them at the track and then went back to the workshop. It was an extended interview effectively, more seeing how we could collaborate with each other moving forward.
“They made an offer for me and I delightfully accepted it.
“They’re on a good trajectory with some great people, expanding to three cars next year, and bolstering the team massively trying to bring the level up.
“The aspiration with all teams is to chase elite performance and so anyone with a fresh set of eyes and an understanding of the physics of going motor racing, that’s what they want to bring into the company to improve.
“Obviously it has not been the greatest season for them at this stage but the trajectory that they’re setting, the path that they want to plot to get to the top… it’s a people business and an expertise business.
Fabian Coulthard, Chaz Mostert and Carl Faux celebrate victory in The Bend 500 with a shoey. Pic: Walkinshaw TWG Racing
“And me looking for a new challenge, another fulfilling job, I’m really looking forward to applying myself to a more technical challenge.”
It’s at this point that Faux expresses his frustration with the current state of Supercars, hence the search for fulfilment elsewhere.
“Supercars is underpinned by technical parity and that’s fine if it is technical parity and not politics that push the technical regime. I’m much more cold, hard facts and black-and-white,” he said.
“The politics of this is something that I don’t want to experience again.
“If it’s a political championship, I’ve got no problem, I’ll go and play the political game – but don’t pretend it’s a technical championship and then go play the political game. That’s where the lines got way too blurred.
“Being able to do a good job and not be penalised for doing a good job is quite appealing for me, so that’s the driver for it.
“It’s alien, it’s different, there’s so much to learn about how they go motor racing over there, how they do their championship.
“But at the end of the day, the physics doesn’t change. You have still got an engine, you have still got four wheels and tyres, you have still got a gearbox, and you are still trying to win races as often as possible.”
Adding an American championship to those he’s been involved with in Europe and Australia is now a burning desire, and he’s eager to use lessons learnt from across the Walkinshaw journey to make it happen.
“You can’t unlearn things, can you? I came here under no illusions that it would be tough, and this next stage is the same sort of thing,” he said.
“You have got to find your feet not only in a different country, which is a massive thing, but a different culture and in different types of racing, and understanding the larger picture before you can really make strides in moving forward.”
Walkinshaw TWG has yet to announce a successor to Faux.
Pic: Walkinshaw TWG Racing