Fujitsu Racing GRM's new team manager Chris Harris at Winton earlier this week.
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By Briar Gunther 12:42 PM Fri 3 September, 2010
Source: BigPond Sport
While Fujitsu Racing GRM was testing its cars for the endurance season at Winton earlier this week, Chris Harris was given a test of his own.
Harris was promoted to the role of team manager a month ago and it was his first time at the track in that role.
He replaces Kevin ‘Shirl’ Shawyer who has stepped down from the role, but was still giving the team a hand at Winton.
Harris joined Fujitsu Racing GRM at the start of last year’s season working as Lee Holdsworth’s race engineer before moving across to work as Michael Caruso’s engineer this year.
“There is big pressure to take over at this stage, but we had the big nine week break so it was sort of an easy handover, it gave me and Shirl a chance to sit down and go over everything,” he said.
“And it was obviously helpful that he’s still around and didn’t just leave and I didn’t take the job with no one to show me what to do or stop me from making mistakes.
“I’ve never managed anyone before so it’s a big change to go from no one to 30-odd people, but I’m enjoying it so far; it’s different to what I was doing before managing the car.”
Harris noted that the team had very strong driver pairings in Holdsworth/David Besnard and Caruso/Michael Ritter for the enduros.
“We’ve got two extremely strong enduro pairings, given our performance last year in that second car at Phillip Island and Bathurst,” he said.
“They (Besnard and Ritter) did an amazing job and I don’t think you could ask for two better co-drivers really because they’re not out there to prove anything to anybody.
“I think they proved it last year and they’re just out there to do a good job for us and they want to win the races as much as we do and I think we’ve got a good shot.”
