{"id":98861,"date":"2025-08-27T05:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T05:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/98861\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T05:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T05:02:11","slug":"mark-winterbottom-talks-team-18-split-adrian-burgess-claim-in-frosty-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/98861\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Winterbottom talks Team 18 split, Adrian Burgess claim in Frosty book"},"content":{"rendered":"

MARK Winterbottom<\/a> has made the stunning claim that he felt a traditional \u201cenemy\u201d brought into the Team 18 ranks was behind his demise as a full-time Supercars driver.<\/p>\n

The 2015 champion opens up on all sorts of topics in his autobiography Frosty<\/a>, which hit shelves yesterday, including the controversial end to his six-year tenure at Team 18.<\/p>\n

Charlie Schwerkolt built his revamped squad for 2019 around Winterbottom, who left Tickford Racing amid feeling their internal priority had shifted to younger teammates Chaz Mostert<\/a> and Cam Waters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And so begun a relationship which saw Team 18 rise into the genuine midfield and occasionally higher \u2013 headlined by pole position at the 2019 Tasmania SuperSprint and victory in the opening race of the 2023 Darwin Triple Crown.<\/p>\n

But Winterbottom, in his book, indicates that the dynamic \u2013 including with Schwerkolt, who he describes as \u201conce the dad I never had\u201d \u2013 changed after Adrian Burgess came on deck at the start of last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the moment he arrived as team manager, things had begun to shift,\u201d Winterbottom wrote.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cAdrian had his own agenda, and it became increasingly clear that didn\u2019t include me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a huge surprise given he was at the helm of Triple Eight from 2011 to 2013 during the height of my war with Whincup; I felt as though he still considered me the enemy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdrian came in with his own ideas and was not interested in mine.<\/p>\n

\u201cCharlie had always listened to me, but he sided with Adrian once he was brought onto the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Different stories have been told regarding ill-fated discussions around a contract extension beyond the end of 2024; either way, Winterbottom says he was told via a brief meeting at a caf\u00e9 last August that he\u2019d be replaced by Anton De Pasquale<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Winterbottom denies that he then attempted to take naming rights sponsor DeWalt to Brad Jones Racing, a rumour which he says caused Schwerkolt to cut communications altogether.<\/p>\n

Now 44, Winterbottom has made a happy return to Tickford and is preparing to co-drive with Cam Waters in the upcoming Ryco Enduro Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MARK Winterbottom has made the stunning claim that he felt a traditional \u201cenemy\u201d brought into the Team 18…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98862,"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-98861","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\/98861","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=98861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}