Supercars announces Burgess departure from head of motorsport role in 2024

The Australian Supercars championship has announced that its head of motorsport Adrian Burgess will depart the organisation early next year, ending his five year tenure in the position.

English engineer Burgess joined the organising body in October 2018 after working for several teams in the Supercars paddock.

He oversaw the arrival of Gen3 rules for 2023, although its first year has been dogged by grumblings over parity between the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang with the Blue Oval winning just four of 26 races in 2023 so far.

Announcing his departure, Supercars said that in addition to seeking a replacement head of motorsport it aims to hire a new technical director and performance engineer.

Paying tribute to Burgess's efforts, Supercars CEO Shane Howard said: “Adrian has made an invaluable contribution to our sport.

“To manage the motorsport and technical operations of one of the world’s leading categories is a challenging task, which Adrian has worked tirelessly on over recent years.

“He has been an integral part of the Motorsport Team and the business, contributing significantly over the past five years. 

“We want to express our deep appreciation to Adrian for the dedication and hard work he has applied in advancing our racing product.”

Photo by: Edge Photographics

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Burgess has been based in Australia for almost two decades, joining Dick Johnson Racing in 2006 and winning the title with James Courtney in 2010 as sporting director before winning a further three titles on the trot as team principal at Triple Eight.

He spent three and a half years as managing director of Walkinshaw Racing from 2014 to 2017, then had a brief spell at Tekno Autosports before joining the organising body in October 2018.

Burgess said: “Making the decision to leave Supercars has been a very difficult one for me to make, but one I am comfortable with at this time.

“I’m very proud to have led the hard-working technical and motorsport departments at Supercars over recent years and I will always be grateful for the time I have spent at Supercars.”

Burgess was backed by Howard after receiving criticism from Triple Eight boss Jamie Whincup at this year's Newcastle season opener. Whincup alleged following the disqualification of his team's cars from a 1-2 finish that Burgess had given approval to place a dry ice radiator on the driver's side of the cars to aid driver cooling - a point Burgess denied.

He was fined $1200 and suspended from driving for six months after being charged with driving three times over the legal alcohol limit in August this year.