PAUL Morris has called on Supercars to relax testing restrictions with regards to the ability for teams to evaluate up-and-coming talent.
Morris is renowned as a driver whisperer, having guided several stars’ ascension to the main game.
Among the next wave of Morris prodigies banging on the door in search of an opportunity are his own son Nash, and Erebus junior Jarrod Hughes.
Hughes, who especially shone at The Bend 500, has been part of the Norwell Motorplex family since his early teens.
“I remember the first day we actually put him in a car, I think he was 15 and he was like ‘can I do the V8 Experience?’ We knew he could but like he looks young now; when he was 15 he looked about 12,” Morris told V8 Sleuth.
“There was an older lady there going for a drive, and I said ‘Hughesy, you’re on’. He picked up his helmet, got in the car and took this lady for her first drive in the V8.
“I remember it to this day, he was bloody excited! We always had to explain, ‘he might look like he’s 12 but he actually can drive’.”
Jarrod Hughes. Pic: Mark Walker
When asked if Tickford Super2 regular and PremiAir co-driver Nash Morris is ready to graduate to the big time, ‘The Dude’ replied: “I think so, for sure. It’s just a matter of finding a seat.
“There’s five or six guys there that are ready to go. You don’t know until you give them a go, that’s the thing.
“I think there’s a couple of things that are stupid: you own a Supercar business but you can’t just take the car to the track and give someone a go.”
Morris labelled the regulations limiting Supercars Championship teams to one evaluation day a year as “bullshit”.
“Even when you do want to give someone a go, you need to baseline that driver throughout the day as the track changes, so you need to be able to put someone experienced in to re-baseline the car,” he said.
“You have got a business there and you are basically overcontrolled about how you can run it.
“So I’d free up the testing a lot and give drivers a go. I think bring back the dedicated co-driver sessions in practice during the year too.”
Morris reserved praise for Erebus CEO Barry Ryan’s prowess on the talent-spotting front.
“Most team owners don’t know what they’re looking at when it comes to drivers, the exception probably being Barry Ryan,” he said.
“If you look at his co-drivers, they did well because he built up their confidence. If you go back to the test day at the start of the year, I reckon if you went through that timing screen and looked at who did the most laps as coeys, it would be his two guys. I think he was the only guy that gave both his coeys green tyres at the test day at QR, and he gave them green tyres at The Bend.
“He is very good at understanding how to get a young driver confidence and get them to do the job. I think that’s probably a really key point there.
“There’s heaps of drivers sitting there, you have just got to make the recipe and see what they can do.”
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Morris also weighed in, upon prompting, on the current Gen3 cars.
“I’m not that close to the actual spec of the car anymore but whenever I look at it, it still looks overcomplicated for what it is and what we’re doing. We’re just racing touring cars,” he said.
“You only have got to look at the refuelling rig: it’s the most expensive dry break coupling you could find, and then the fail point is still a hose clamp. You just look at things like that and think it’s a massive overcomplication.
“They’ve got what they’ve got, but there probably needs to be a holistic approach to pull some cost out of those cars. But the guys that own those teams don’t seem to be too worried about it.”
