James Courtney #22

The 2017 season marks James Courtney’s seventh year with the Walkinshaw family and he returns to race with new colours in the #22 Mobil 1 HSV Racing Commodore.

Courtney was a superstar in the making from a young age and like many he started his career in karting. His first milestone in motorsport came in 1994 at the age of 14, when he was runner-up in the Australian National Karting Championship.

He turned his attention to Europe and just one year later he became the Junior World Kart Champion. Then in 1997 Courtney claimed victory in the World Formula A Kart Championship.

He quickly climbed the ranks of motorsport and competed in categories considered stepping stones to Formula 1. He progressed to Formula Ford and it wasn’t long before he added two more milestone wins to his already impressive list of achievements. In 2000, he won both the British and European titles while racing for the factory Van Diemen Team.

The next year he moved up again, this time to British F3 with the Jaguar Junior Formula 3 Team. He soon attracted international headlines when he was announced as a test driver for Jaguar’s Formula 1 team.

Unfortunately, his F1 career was short lived when a rear wing failure caused him to crash at high speed in Monza, in 2002. It was a crash that almost ended not only his career, but his life.

It was a long recovery but Courtney was soon back in a race car, this time in the Japanese F3 Championship, which he won in his debut year in 2003. He then spent the next two years racing in the Japanese GT Series.

Longing to return to Australian shores, Courtney signed as a co-driver with the Holden Racing Team for the 2005 Supercars endurance season alongside Jim Richards.

The following year he scored a full-time drive with Stone Brothers Racing and he quickly proved his ability in a touring car by finishing on the podium at the Bathurst 1000 and winning the 2006 Mike Kable Rookie of the Year award.

His maiden Supercars race win came in 2008 came at Queensland Raceway when he started from pole position. The following year he switched teams from SBR to Dick Johnson Racing and it was a move that proved to be successful.

In 2010, his second year with DJR, Courtney won his first Supercars Championship and he was awarded the Barry Sheene Medal for best and fairest.

Having been there once before, Courtney return the Holden Racing Team in 2011 and immediately put runs on the board by winning the second race of the year in Abu Dhabi.

In 2003 at Phillip Island, Courtney was struck by injury again and was ruled out of the last race of the season. It ended his fight for the championship title that year, but he returned to the Supercars Championship in 2014 with style and claimed the top prize at the Clipsal 500, the first event of the season.

He secured back-to-back Clipsal 500 victories winning again in 2015 after starting on pole position. But his career was marred by injury for a thirsd time when a freak accident saw him hit by debris that was dislodged by a low flying helicopter at Sydney Motorsport Park.

He missed two of the three endurance events that year, but his return to racing couldn’t have been better scripted. A bold race strategy coupled with brilliant driving saw him and Jack Perkins win at the Gold Coast 600.

The second race of the Clipsal 500 was his only race win in 2016, but he did stand on the podium multiple times during the season.

While James is a power house on-track, his passion off-track is in developing young kart drivers and he spends much of his spare time travelling to karting events with his JC Kart team.