The number three is a big part of the success of M3 Racing in the BNT V8 SuperTourers championship, director Paul Manuell says.

Indeed the team is the most successful in the category – Greg Murphy is the reigning champion and in their last race the team’s three drivers finished one-two-three. Now they are gearing up for their races at the big V8 Supercar meeting at Pukekohe over Anzac weekend.

The team, set up specifically for the BNT V8 SuperTourers when the new championship for high-power V8s began in early 2012, has three directors: former NZV8 champion Manuell, Murphy and Graeme Moore whose son Richard is a fast-rising star in the team. Each director has a surname beginning with M.

They are the only three-car team and Manuell says this number brings benefits both financially and in terms of performance.

“That’s the whole foundation of the team really, to try to dilute the cost of racing with the infrastructure and overheads,” Manuell says.

“And then the racing side of it was to get everyone up to speed and support one another. And bring in the whole team racing thing, although they’re all separate sponsors. We’re all under the same roof.”

The team operates from a specially built base in East Tamaki.

“It’s a state of the art facility, it’s a pretty awesome shop, purpose-built by us. We do things right, that’s all. That’s what it’s all about, making sure there’s no stone left unturned, every box is ticked and doing things properly.”

Manuell raced his number 15 Commodore with the trademark Orix sponsorship – the longest-running naming rights sponsorship in New Zealand motorsport, he says – for the first two seasons but this year he has handed it over to young Aussie Morgan Haber. Manuell will share the car with Haber in the three endurance races later in the year.

M3 has three full-time staff plus some contractors and for race weekends the team swells to 30, including volunteers just working for the love of the sport. The team brings in specialist race engineers from Australia for each meeting, making use of their high-level expertise and experience.

Murphy’s car – which this season carries the champion’s number one instead of his trademark 51 – is tuned by Paul Forgie who has operated in motorsport around the world including the British Touring Car Championship and Nascar in the US.

Matthew Crawford has had a long association with the Holden Racing Team-Walkinshaw Racing group and crosses the Tasman to look after Richard Moore, while Peter Smith, whose CV includes seven years with the Holden Racing Team, works on Haber’s car.

“It’s certainly a big part of it, and a great help,” Manuell says. “They are very good at what they do but so is everyone else in the team. Without everybody, we’re nobody.”

When it comes to finding the best setup for each circuit, having three drivers is a real boon. The drivers and engineers share the data from the cars’ sensors with one another, and discus the best approach jointly.

“We’re lucky we can go out there with three setups on the cars and come pretty close pretty quickly – that’s one of the benefits of having three cars,” Manuell says. “But all the drivers drive differently as well; there’s different driving styles.

“Our engineers know where they need the car now, they’ve been running them long enough. They know what the tracks demand from the cars at each track so we go out with a pretty good baseline.”

When the team was running in the order Murphy-Haber-Moore in the last part of the final race in last month’s Pukekohe meeting some might have wondered whether team orders had been issued to make sure Murphy won. Manuell shoots that idea down.

“Our orders to Morgan were pass him!” he said. “But he’s a wily old dog, Murph, and it’s not an easy feat getting past him.”

Indeed at the time Haber said: “I had a few goes at him [Murphy] but he’s smarter than me.”

Murphy’s being hassled by Haber was ironic because it was Murphy who had encouraged the youngster to get into racing seriously. Haber and his father Joe had engaged Murphy as a consultant as to whether Morgan had the talent to go far.

Haber is also racing in the Dunlop V8 Supercars Development Series in Australia, while Richard Moore sees the BNT V8 SuperTourers as his preferred platform for achieving the dream of so many young Down Under drivers – getting into the top category of V8 Supercars.

The Kiwi V8s, like the Supercars, have race-type chassis and they are very nearly as fast as the Aussie cars – the difference around Pukekohe is only about a second a lap.

Richard Moore scored his first victory in BNT V8 SuperTourers last year and has come agonisingly close on other occasions. He appreciates the help he gets from his engineer Matthew Crawford.

“He’s got a wealth of knowledge that we’re tapping into and he’s pretty good with me,” Moore said. “Personally I’m quite new to V8 racing and he’s a coach as well as an engineer. That makes a big difference.

“And Greg and Paul are really good with that and helping me, with lines and how I’m driving the car and what I should be doing and shouldn’t be doing.”

The power of three again.