AJI separates from SRD; becomes single-car Ford teamAndrew Jones has taken the decision to end the merger of his Andrew Jones Inc (AJI) team with SRD International. The split will result in a single-car entry by AJI, fielding the #77 Ford Fusion for team founder Andrew Jones in the V8Thunder Trophy Series. The other drivers who were previously with SRD-AJI will presumably become full-time members of SRD, in one of it's other divisions (SRD International, SRD Speedworx etc.)
"I think the time is right to un-merge the teams; AJI was always intended to be a single car team and in fairness, despite all the resources within SRD, running 4 cars was probably a bit much. The plan was always to return to Ford when the economy picked up; well signs are that it's recovering, plus the WTR Fords ran really well last season and that was all the encouragement I needed. I brought the sponsors with me that were on the #77 for the last few seasons, LV= and Unite have been great, Cadburys have some issues at the moment but I expect they will return and we are talking to a major player about an alternate sponsorship scheme for the summer.
"I hate to leave my team-mates behind; I feel that the AJI original 3amigos of myself, Junior and Bisch have grown together in this league. However, I don't want to be the one holding Bisch back. He is clearly ready to have a shot alongside Jack, CJ and Mathieu in the SRDI team. He deserves the chance to win a team championship which, despite adding Mr Consistency Mike Cooper to the team last season, we were never going to achieve. Junior, what can I say about my boy? I guess that if he was running a full schedule then I'd have stayed at SRD, but he's busy discovering that there's more to life than waking up at 5am to race against Poms.
"I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved at SRD for all the help, team spiritedness and good feeling that underlies everything they do. You guys have been the best team-mates I could wish for. I'm thinking that you'll still be the guys I'll be looking to hook up with on the SuperSpeedways. But now the time has come to go it alone. This independence will also help me in my role as Series Director."
The team presented the new #77 LV= Unite Ford Fusion that will be raced by Andrew Jones in V8Thunder Trophy Series Summer 2010 and MiniSeason2.
Thankyou to Ian Smiff for the render - You the man!
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Andrew Jones - #77, shifts permitting.
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