Whittaker joins Team Dilusi

Feels a little like I’ve already written this once this season but lets not dwell on that :). Today I was invited out to the official launch of “Team Dilusi”, the brain child of former national MX champ, businessman and clear adrenalin junkie Kingsley Thompson.

Thompson is striving to create a true business proposition that in turn leads to participation in Motorsport, rather than the usual method many adopt which is go racing, then coming looking for sponsor dollars with the hand out and back already to the wall. Surrounded by a team of professionals who take care of crucial areas of the team, Thompson himself seems to be part CEO and full time race driver.

While I could go a little deeper into background, a majority of MGN’s readers are interested in Curt Whittakers choice to don the Green and White, so here are a few snippets of the conversations I had with both Curt and Kingsley today.

Thanks to Roo “stayclassy” Wills for coming out and drinking the beer and eating snacks.

I asked Kingsley “So, what’s this really all about”

Kingsley -”I’m a business man, I work hard at what I do and I want to succeed at everything I do. Everything you see here today is the result of almost a years hard work and research into what market drivers were, what sponsors wanted and where various forms of motor sport were heading. I attended a number of events in a low key way and tried to stay un-noticed just so I could observe how they functioned, who was attending and who each sports stand out personalities were.”

We then moved on to ” So, why Curt Whittaker?”

Kingsley” It’s pretty obvious really isn’t it, Curt is what we aspire to be as a team, he is a race car driver whom is professional. I can take him out of the race car and put him in a room with CEOs and decision makers and he is just as comfortable as he is spinning tires at 200kmh. Curt is getting results as we know from the Tectaloy International win, and his current standing on points, so for me it was a pretty easy decision. Drifting has such a strong youth and online presence that it was an essential part of our offering”

Brendon White from D1NZ then rudely interupted me with his TV crew, so I wandered over to Curt and pried him away from the photos with the ladies he was clearly enjoying.

MGN- “Curt, sorry to interfere with your busy photo shoot, but how are you feeling about this”

Curt – “Well, I don’t know about this whole having to wear shoes thing (joking), but it’s pretty cool to be a part of something like this.”

MGN- “you did a bit of TV yesterday?”

Curt-”yeah that was pretty hard ay, it took a fair while of just going over what we were going to talk about, and the TV guys kept saying that I had to remember to keep things really simple, as most of the show’s watchers wouldn’t understand the normal “car guy” explanation. I think it went pretty well in the end but I think I’m definately better to stick to driving”

“Whats the next steps for Curt and Team Dilusi?”

Curt-”We are still finalizing a lot of things, and we need to bring our midget car driver on board and then the whole package will start coming together. For us as Whittaker Motorsport, we function as we always have and will be looking to bring the noise to Whangarei and keep at the top of the table. It’s still pretty close and I want that title this year after coming so close last season”

“what do you think of the “lucy’s”

Curt ” Bro….can Lynley read this? hahaha , they are part of the secret plan to distract other drivers ” ( I may or may not have made that part up )

So there you have it, Whittaker joins Team Dilusi and the game changes with a new era of motorsport offering looming on the horizon. If you ask me, professionalism can only help grow the appeal of 4 wheels to business, and the sooner some of the rough edges and pretenders are removed from motorsport the better .