The well-travelled racer now Supercars' elder statesman

Sydney Motorsport Park, 27 June, 2020. James Courtney sits in a Tickford Mustang. There’s not a hint of familiarity to his surrounds. He’s only been in the car once, for a seat fitting the previous day in that very same trackside garage.

Now he’s about to drive the car for the very first time. He has two 20-minute practice sessions to get used to it before qualifying, which is in less than two hours time. By mid-afternoon, he will have already have finished his first race as a Tickford driver.

“That was it,” says Tickford boss Tim Edwards as he reflects on that unusual day. “No test day. It was literally, ‘hi my name is James’ and we said, ‘there’s the car, get in it!’.”

“It was crazy,” adds Courtney. “The first day I drove the car I qualified and raced it as well. It was a wild experience. It was definitely the most unprepared I’ve ever gone in to a race meeting.”

Even in a Supercars world of very limited testing, that was highly unusual. But so were a lot of things in 2020, not least how Courtney’s long-awaited Tickford shot finally came about. Before the full brunt of the pandemic had reached Australia, Courtney’s 2020 was already off to a wild start. He’d left Walkinshaw Andretti United for the promise of the Supercars-backed Team Sydney dream, but, by the time the season opener in Adelaide rolled around, it was clear something wasn’t right. The whole point of targeting the Sydney market was because, supposedly, it was an embarrassment of sponsor riches.

So it was somewhat odd that, literally the night before track action kicked off in Adelaide, Courtney’s car was being wrapped in the colours of Boost Mobile, a long-time personal backer of Courtney led by LA-based businessman Peter Adderton. Thanks to a last-minute, Hail Mary deal orchestrated by Courtney himself.

The team was significantly undercooked and it was little surprise that just days after the first round Courtney walked. And he did so under the impression that there wasn’t another full-time ride out there for him. The seats were all locked away. The season underway. But he figured no ride was better than Team Sydney. Adderton promised to look after him, but the best Courtney could hope for was a limited wildcard programme and a top enduro seat.

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Discussions for exactly that were well-advanced with Erebus Motorsport when, with the season stalled due to the pandemic, an unexpected gap appeared at Tickford. The gap came in the team’s ‘fourth’ car, a customer entry using Phil Munday’s 23Red licence. When Milwaukee Tools pulled its backing, Munday got cold feet – understandable at the height of the uncertainty created by the global health crisis.

Munday shut down his entry, Davison was left without a drive, and Tickford with an unfunded car that needed a driver. All of a sudden Courtney, with his Boost backing, was perfectly placed. In about the most unusual circumstances possible, a courtship between Courtney and the Campbellfield team that started way back in the early 2000s – and had gone close to yielding a deal more than once – came to an end.

“The first time I spoke to the team, when it was known as Ford Performance Racing, was when Rod Barrett was there,” says Courtney. "That was in 2004, or maybe even earlier, about coming back to do Bathurst. Each deal and renewal I’ve gone through over this period we’ve tried to nut something out. As I said to Tim, he’s been sexting me for a long time – and he finally got the courage to hand it over and we’ve gotten on with it. It’s been a long tease.

“I suppose it shows you should never burn a bridge. Always keep the door open. I was always polite when things didn’t pan out [with Tickford] and always made sure I had a good relationship with everyone, because I didn’t know what would happen in the future. And lo and behold, years later, here I am.”

Now, 17 months on, Courtney is fully-entrenched in the Tickford fold. The 41-year-old is in sparkling form, sitting ninth in the standings, and genuinely looks to have found a happy home at the Ford-backed team. They seem to like him and he seems to like them. So much so that they all recently agreed to a new multi-year deal – significant, as often drivers have to settle for single-year deals later in their careers.

“With a bigger team you have more people, and with more people there’s a bigger chance that people won’t get on. But everyone here gels really well. People laugh when I say it’s a team, but it really is a team," James Courtney

Fairly or not, Courtney hasn’t always been known as the easiest driver to work with. But, even though Cam Waters is the clear team leader at Tickford, the dynamic is working. Edwards has an interesting theory as to why that is – and it’s tied up with that unusual debut at Sydney Motorsport Park last year.

“It was a timing thing, the way that he came into the team part-way through a season,” Edwards explains. “If you look at the last decade, he’s been the leader in whatever team he’s been in. That level of stature. But he came here... I wouldn’t say on the back foot, but needing his team-mates to help him get up to speed with our car. They were very forthcoming. And JC went, ‘oh, I like this’. And he reciprocated. He’s been a real asset. He works so well with Cam – Cam was like, ‘you better be re-signing JC for next year’, because he really enjoys having him as a team-mate.”

James Courtney, Tickford Ford

Photo by: Dirk Klynsmith / Motorsport Images

Courtney, the first to admit that he’s faced challenging team environments before, agrees with the Edwards theory.

“I suppose I was perceived a certain way going in,” he says. “To be thrown in the deep end, and everyone having to get on with it straight away, yeah, it did make us park our egos. That laid the foundation for the relationship.”

The warm and fuzzy nature of the working relationship is something Courtney even admits came as a bit of a surprise, particularly as Tickford works to a crowded three or four-car model.

“With a bigger team you have more people, and with more people there’s a bigger chance that people won’t get on,” he says. “But everyone here gels really well. People laugh when I say it’s a team, but it really is a team. The majority of the teams I’ve been with before, they were teams within teams. You know, left garage versus right garage or whatever. But this really is very cohesive across all the cars. Everyone is genuinely pushing in the same direction and happy for each other when they get results.

“When Cam won in Townsville this year I was legitimately pumped for him. Previously I was sort of fighting team-mates more than working with them. You see other teammates standing down there clapping [during the podium], ‘good job mate’, but it’s all a show. But I was legitimately happy for Cam.”

There may be a neat harmony between driver and team, but there’s still room for disagreement. Take this new deal as an example. There are a number of contributing factors to why Tickford re-signed Courtney – which we’ll get to soon – but according to Edwards it was, first and foremost, the veteran driver’s impressive pace this season. Particularly in races.

“That’s the exact reason he was re-signed. It’s his performance,” says Edwards. You see with those – and let me be careful with what I call him – older guys, or more experienced guys, it’s the race craft that shines through. Occasionally he might get out-qualified by the young kids, but you can guarantee by the end of the race, he’ll be the one in front.

James Courtney, Tickford Racing Ford

Photo by: Edge Photographics

“The experienced drivers know how to pace themselves, they know how to manage the tyres, they can carry it though to the end. Someone earlier in their journey as a Supercars driver may be able to snag a lap, but they tend to finish further back than where they start. That’s where JC shines. He makes sure he’s there or thereabouts by the end of the race.”

But Courtney, by his own lofty standards of poles and wins, doesn’t feel his performance alone warranted the new deal. He reckons it was actually his rather unexpected ‘team player’ side that drove the Edwards and co’s desire to keep him around.

“To be honest I think it’s the stuff outside the car,” he says. "The speed and results have been good. But I think working with Cam and Jack [Le Brocq] and everyone in the team, and them seeing how hard I do work as a team player... I think I’ve been perceived as being a bit of an arsehole in the past. I’ve been seen as someone who just looks after himself. But I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, I just get on with the job. And being here, doing it here, I think the guys have been surprised by that.

“The speed has helped, but I haven’t won a race and I haven’t qualified on pole. So I can’t put [the new deal] down to my speed. I think it’s all of the other things. I’m enjoying it so much. I feel that the enthusiasm that I show is getting pushed through the rest of the organisation. When you’re enjoying it, the people around you are happier. And when they are happier they are doing a better job. It snowballs from there. That’s got a lot to do with it too.”

Whatever either party sees as the primary reason for the new deal, there’s more than one contributing factor. There are at least three more that are worth exploring.

The first is the upcoming switch to the Gen3 regulations. The new rules should mark the biggest technical shift since the five-litre formula came in to play. And the transition will offer a team like Tickford, which is always within touching distance of the front but does struggle with consistency, a golden opportunity to establish (or re-establish) itself as a powerhouse.

Another factor that has played its part in Courtney’s new deal is his backing. Much is made of his links to Boost Mobile, to the point that he’s seen to some as a pay driver. But the tag is grossly unfair

Courtney was there when Supercars went from H-pattern to sequential shift. He was there when the Project Blueprint cars made way for the Car of the Future hardware. And in his previous life before Supercars, he was a Formula 1 test driver. He was a SuperGT star. He has a wealth of experience that Tickford is banking on being a game-changer during the Gen3 transition.

“Having someone of his experience once we start testing a Gen3 car will also be invaluable,” says Edwards. “He has been around the traps. He’s driven a lot of different cars. And that experience will help with Gen3. It’s not the reason we re-signed him, but I see it as a big asset. And that’s why we didn't just do a one-year deal. We do need him for 2023 and Gen3.

James Courtney, Tickford Racing Ford

Photo by: Edge Photographics

“He’s got very good feel for the car. And he’s very good at articulating exactly what he’s feeling. At the end of any session you’ll see Cam and JC jump out of the car and talk to their respective engineers. And then quite often you’ll see JC comparing notes with Cam and they’ll describe things that both of the engineers are listening to. You see the nods of acknowledgement from the others about the way he’s described it.

“That comes from experience. Of course there’s natural ability in there, but you don’t get as far as he’s got in your career without being able to articulate whatever the car is doing.”

Courtney agrees that his experience will help during the Gen3 switch. Expanding on his own strengths from a technical perspective, Courtney says he likes to deliver “black and white” feedback. While the modern trend is for drivers to take a collaborative approach to engineering the car, Courtney prefers to not directly influence the thought process of a trained engineer.

Another factor that has played its part in Courtney’s new deal is his backing. Much is made of his links to Boost Mobile, to the point that he’s seen to some as a pay driver. But the tag is grossly unfair. Firstly, while it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Courtney continue to race in Boost colours for the next few years, there is no formal guarantee of Boost money beyond the current season. Secondly, Courtney has such loyal backing from Boost because he’s carefully curated the relationship over the decades. Adderton is a ruthless, successful businessman. He’s loyal but he’s not running a charity. If he didn’t see value in supporting Courtney he wouldn’t do it.

Courtney brings and manages other backers too, such as EFS Solar. So why wouldn’t Tickford want a driver that’s both quick on track and savvy in the marketplace?

“I didn't come from a privileged background, so I have a real understanding of what it costs to go racing and how lucky we are to be able to do what we do,” he says. “I’ve got a good understanding of the value of money.

“I enjoy the hustle on the side. I suppose working with Alan Gow from such a young age, and being around guys like him and Mick Doohan... Mick is the master of putting people together. And [former team-mate] Russell Ingall was quite good at it too. You don’t have to be the smartest person, or have gone to school. It’s about understanding what people are after, and who you know who can give them what they want. Putting people together."

Race winner Cam Waters, Tickford Ford

Photo by: Edge Photographics

There’s one last factor that helped score Courtney this new deal, and it ultimately has nothing to do with Courtney. It’s about the man Tickford is banking on to deliver its next title – Cam Waters.

In Courtney, Tickford has a driver that knows how to win a title. And a person who has over the past year become invested in helping Waters reach the top of the category. He is now looking to impart his experience on Waters, and says he’d take great satisfaction from seeing his team-mate win a crown in the next couple of years.

“The timing of my career is very different to where Cam is at in his career,” says Courtney. "He’s the one that everyone is expecting results from, and I’m there to help him to get around things that he’s having issues with. Often they are things I’ve already experienced, so I can help him navigate through it.

“When we’re sitting in the truck it might sound like we’re just talking crap, but I'm subtly saying things to help. I'm not saying I’m Yoda. I’m just talking about my experiences and things that I’ve learned along the journey. And how I reacted to things, or how I wish I’d reacted to it. Talking about mistakes that I’ve made along the way.

“Hopefully it helps Cam avoid some of those mistakes. We’re all human, we’re always going to make mistakes. But it’s how you react when you balls something up. And making sure you learn from it, you don’t do it again. I'm trying to instil that in him.

“It’s not an ‘if’ he’s going to win a championship. It’s when? And how many?

“He’s got a good head on his shoulders, good race craft, he’s passionate, he’s got everything that he needs.”

But Courtney also knows his role in a Waters title tilt won’t just come down to what he says in the transporter. He can make a difference out on track as well.

“As a team, including myself, we need to step up. On race weekends I need to be there taking points away from the guys that he’s racing in the championship. It’s not solely on him, it comes down to everyone in the team doing their job.”

James Courtney, Tickford Racing Ford

Photo by: Mark Horsburgh, Edge Photographics