{"id":415719,"date":"2026-01-16T00:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415719\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T00:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T00:14:18","slug":"roland-dane-talks-state-of-supercars-gen3-opportunity-james-warburton-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/415719\/","title":{"rendered":"Roland Dane talks state of Supercars, Gen3 opportunity, James Warburton faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROLAND Dane believes Supercars has failed to fully maximise the potential of its Gen3 platform but is optimistic that will change under James Warburton\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n

After four years out of day-to-day Supercars team management, Dane is back \u2013 this time at the helm of PremiAir Racing.<\/p>\n

That stint out of the paddock has given him a chance to look at the championship from a different perspective, and he didn\u2019t hold back when now asked about the state of Supercars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that the opportunity provided by Gen3 on a number of levels to be honest has not been fully taken up by Supercars,\u201d he told V8 Sleuth.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut one of the reasons why I was happy to buckle under pressure from Peter Xiberras and get fully involved this year is because I\u2019m a believer in James Warburton.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"James Warburton. Pic: Supplied\/Mark Horsburgh<\/p>\n

Asked to elaborate on such shortcomings, Dane pointed to the \u201cexcitement around the best-looking touring cars probably we\u2019ve ever had, and certainly far better looking than the cars that we did have\u201d being \u201cunderdone on a whole number of levels\u201d.<\/p>\n

The previous generation cars he refers to of course were the ZB Commodore and Gen2 Mustang, which were widely dubbed as the \u2018German taxi\u2019 and \u2018Frankenstein Mustang\u2019 respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I do feel that with James in charge, there\u2019s the potential to achieve far more,\u201d Dane continued, having seen Warburton\u2019s work as Supercars CEO from 2013-17.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t seen the final Toyota but I think that will be equally appealing visually to the Mustang and the Camaro.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Dane did however urge Warburton to put any bold internationalism plans on the backburner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a complete waste of time and I would urge them to concentrate on the product in Australia and New Zealand. That\u2019s our heartland,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, look how many series have been stung by trying to go outside their natural territory, including Supercars. We\u2019ve tried it, it hasn\u2019t worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cDTM tried it way back to 1996 with ITC, and the most they could do was go to Austria and sometimes to Holland, but they\u2019re 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 \u2013 it\u2019s not on the calendar this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, no, I would urge us to stick firmly in our territory and our lane and maximise it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROLAND Dane believes Supercars has failed to fully maximise the potential of its Gen3 platform but is optimistic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415720,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-415719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}