ROLAND Dane believes Supercars has failed to fully maximise the potential of its Gen3 platform but is optimistic that will change under James Warburton’s watch.

After four years out of day-to-day Supercars team management, Dane is back – this time at the helm of PremiAir Racing.

That stint out of the paddock has given him a chance to look at the championship from a different perspective, and he didn’t hold back when now asked about the state of Supercars.

“I feel that the opportunity provided by Gen3 on a number of levels to be honest has not been fully taken up by Supercars,” he told V8 Sleuth.

“But one of the reasons why I was happy to buckle under pressure from Peter Xiberras and get fully involved this year is because I’m a believer in James Warburton.

“Every category like this, every sporting car category, regardless of what it is, needs a salesman, and having a sport that has not been run by a salesman for so many years now has been painful to watch from the outside in the extreme.”

James Warburton. Pic: Supplied/Mark Horsburgh

Asked to elaborate on such shortcomings, Dane pointed to the “excitement around the best-looking touring cars probably we’ve ever had, and certainly far better looking than the cars that we did have” being “underdone on a whole number of levels”.

The previous generation cars he refers to of course were the ZB Commodore and Gen2 Mustang, which were widely dubbed as the ‘German taxi’ and ‘Frankenstein Mustang’ respectively.

“But I do feel that with James in charge, there’s the potential to achieve far more,” Dane continued, having seen Warburton’s work as Supercars CEO from 2013-17.

“I haven’t seen the final Toyota but I think that will be equally appealing visually to the Mustang and the Camaro.

“So I think the look and feel of the championship from the outside is far better than it was five years ago, in terms of the on-track product.”

Dane did however urge Warburton to put any bold internationalism plans on the backburner.

“I think it’s a complete waste of time and I would urge them to concentrate on the product in Australia and New Zealand. That’s our heartland,” he said.

“I mean, look how many series have been stung by trying to go outside their natural territory, including Supercars. We’ve tried it, it hasn’t worked.

“DTM tried it way back to 1996 with ITC, and the most they could do was go to Austria and sometimes to Holland, but they’re very close and very easy to get to. You can see it with IndyCar, you can even see it with NASCAR when they went to Mexico last year – it’s not on the calendar this year.

“So, no, I would urge us to stick firmly in our territory and our lane and maximise it.”