Walkinshaw targets Prodrive

The former Arrows team boss has just announced a return to European motorsport activity with a deal to prepare Mitsubishi Group N rally cars - and he is keen to rival Prodrive's high standards.

"We are doing a couple of things at the moment in conjunction with Colt Cars as we decided that my mate David Richards was having it too easy with Prodrive," he said on stage at the Autosport International Show on Thursday.

"So we dreamt up doing Mitsubishi Group N cars, and we have set up an operation to build and service those."

Walkinshaw has not been involved in European motorsport since the Arrows team and his TWR company collapsed after the 2002 season.

Looking back on the end of the Arrows team, he admitted that he was far from happy with the way things turned out when a sale to energy drinks company Red Bull was blocked by team shareholders.

"It was a nightmare," he said. "At the end of the day we had the team sold to Red Bull and it was blocked because certain judicial people had not heard of Red Bull and didn't know if they had any money. I suppose now they do, but that is all history."

Alongside his involvement with Gloucester Rugby Club, Walkinshaw has kept close to motor racing with an involvement with Holden in the Australian V8 Supercar championship.

"I was away (from racing) for a couple of years and we have been running the Australian operations to get our hand back in," he said.