HOLDEN and Red Bull Racing recently whisked the covers off the 2017 livery for the new Red Bull Holden Racing Team alliance, a calculated risk which the brand is hopeful that fans will back.

The reveal was staged at Holden’s Fisherman’s Bend headquarters to a packed house of Holden staff, media and a select band of long-term customers.

Red Bull has been a long standing and very active sponsor of Triple Eight Race Engineering – by far the most successful team in Australian Supercar racing for the past decade.

Red Bull is renowned for its innovative, professional and effective sponsorship activations, they have never been known to just spend money and expect results.

Until this year, Holden’s factory support and the Holden Racing Team name (HRT) resided with the Walkinshaw organisation, the company’s partner in manufacturing and selling Holden Special Vehicles (HSV) to enthusiast Holden owners.

The HRT and Walkinshaw names have been synonymous in racing circles from soon after the demise of Holden’s relationship with Peter Brock and his Holden Dealer Team in 1987.

But, under Walkinshaw, HRT made a patchy start in its early years before later growing to dominate V8 Supercar racing through the late 90s and early noughties in much the same way as Triple Eight does today.

HRT’s period of dominance saw it develop a huge and loyal fanbase, known as the Red Army, many of whom were vocal in their disapproval of Holden’s treatment of their team as a “brand”.

Many felt that Holden should have retired the HRT name rather than shifting it from team to team. Imagine if your footy team had a bad few years and then simply moved its name on to another completely different footy team in search of quick success.

Winning races and getting the sponsors’ brand on TV is what it’s all about.

Motorsport has been a fundamental brand-building exercise for Holden, but with the local industry moving out of manufacturing the question now is: in what form it can continue and what will the fans make of it?

Shifting the HRT name to Triple Eight Race Engineering with its high profile Red Bull sponsorship, and what have been consistently the fastest cars, shows Holden’s determination to gets its official racing team name back to the very sharp end by whatever method is necessary.

Holden’s long-term involvement in Australian motorsport has been a consistent marketing advantage, and the basis for a succession of special models beginning with GTS 350 Monaros and XU-1 Toranas back in the day, to SS Commodores and HSVs for the past 30 years or so.

Walkinshaw racing will continue to compete in Supercars with Commodores and no direct factory support, and will announce its plans for 2017 on February 6. This team has said little about its future so far other than to expect, “a new name. A new look (and) the same relentless passion”.

Will the fans follow the HRT name to Red Bull Racing or will they stick with Walkinshaw? The latter is an organisation for which many of the Red Army hold strong affection, either through motorsport or Holden Special Vehicles.

GoAutoNews Premium asked Holden’s general manager of marketing, brand and media strategy Emma Pinwill how confident she was that the fans would come across to the Red Bull HRT arrangement and how she planned to measure that.

“We will be working closely with the team to try and engage that audience to come across and follow us,” she said. “We will be doing a lot of work on social media. We have nearly a quarter of a million fans on our motorsports page that we will continue to engage with.”

Keeping people interested is crucial. If the TV ratings, track attendances and merchandise sales aren’t there, the whole Supercars series could lose relevance as an effective marketing or business exercise.

The success of the Supercars series over the past 20 years or so has been built on the deeply tribal contest between Holden and Ford V8s and extensive free-to-air TV coverage.

On the TV front, most of the sport’s live coverage is now via Fox Sports, with only a half dozen of the bigger events shown live on free-to-air TV. Viewer numbers dropped sharply with the shift to pay TV but have since improved a little.

Some fans are still not happy with having to pay to watch the racing, and that has concerned many of the sponsors who are seeking maximum exposure for the money they invest.

On the competition front, two of three new manufacturers attracted to the sport in 2013 – AMG and Volvo – have gone, while Ford is no longer officially involved and the factory supported Commodores won’t run a V8 after this year.

Supercars’ regulations are changing with the times and, under what are termed Gen II rules, engines other than V8s will be allowed to compete with the existing power plants from 2018.

Part of Triple Eight’s deal with Holden for its support and HRT status is Triple Eight’s development of the imported Opel Insignia based Commodore into a 2018 Supercar powered by a twin-turbo V6 engine.

Triple Eight’s engineering pedigree is excellent, as is its track record for developing successful aerodynamic packages for sedan-based race cars. You can expect that the 2018 Commodore will be a potent race car.

Much less certain is who they will have to race against, and whether the Supercars series and its revenue producing audience can withstand the changes.

Could it be that the long-standing and successful Supercars racing series will become as relevant as a fax machine?

Commentary by Daniel Cotterill