About KRE Race Engines
KRE Race Engines is a family owned and run business by Ken & Wendy McNamara that has emerged from a backyard business to a highly successful fully dedicated race engine workshop in the south-east Brisbane suburb of Redland Bay.
Renowned as leaders in Australia for building race winning engines for numerous Speedway teams throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as engines for Supercar teams such as Triple Eight Race Engineering/RedBull Racing Australia, Brad Jones Racing, Team 18, PremiAir, Erebus & Matt Stone Racing as well as support categories including Super 2 and Super 3 and TCM (Touring Car Masters).
With Ken’s automotive mechanic trade background, KRE was formed in 1995 as a mechanical workshop. It then evolved into building Speedway/Sprintcar engines, then Supercar engines and each year building over 100+ Sprintcar / Speedway race engines and numerous Supercar engines. “I still enjoy dynoing the engines myself so I can keep an eye on how they perform before they go out to the customer”, Ken says.
Early Beginnings
Originally Ken was involved with drag racing whilst doing his mechanical apprenticeship but it was when he became associated with fellow Brisbane Sprintcar racer Darren Jensen that he began to delve into Sprintcar motors. As his expertise grew, so too did his clientele throughout Australia and New Zealand.
Ken’s previous Supercar stints working with Mark Larkham, Stone Brothers Racing and John Briggs Racing led him to Triple Eight where KRE now continues to develop their GM Chev race engine program along with other Supercar race teams.
Having progressed from a small team to one of the biggest players in Australian motorsport makes Ken and Wendy appreciate their success. It is a pleasant surprise therefore to hear Ken state, “I’ve been lucky to be involved with numerous Bathurst wins but I also rate winning the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic on par with winning Bathurst.”
A measure of how much KRE has evolved over the years can be judged by the bare statistic that Ken has gone from working long nights on his own in his backyard shed to a staff of 10 alongside wife Wendy. KRE staff include machinists, engine builders, workshop & administration staff.
Solid Management
Working closely with successful Triple Eight owner Roland Dane enabled Ken and Wendy to gain plenty of knowledge as to how to run the business, particularly with an emphasis upon management and racing. “The way that Roland works and the procedures he has in place have helped us go from a one-man show to managing a team of people and customers which is something he has a knack of doing very well. Roland takes his racing seriously and is a straight forward and fair person, so even though his standards are very high, you know where you stand with him. We appreciate greatly that he gave us a chance to look after his race engine program and advice on how to manage it all and we are happy to be still working together all these years later.”
We have a full parts inventory system to keep track of engine stock and what parts each engine has for future reference and we work closely with our parts suppliers in the USA and here in Australia, to enable us to stock custom parts suited to KRE specific engines, this enables us to rebuild engines in a timely manner.
Work Ethic
Feedback from customers is perceived by Ken as an important role so usually you’ll find him at a race track somewhere around the country any given Saturday night; including during busy weekends away servicing Supercars. He admits, “As our market grew, a lot of our customers appreciated me being there to talk to them. At the same time I can keep in touch with developments and you can understand what happens at the track rather than receiving a phone call later.”
Such has been the work ethic and business acumen employed by KRE that Speedway customers now include the likes of Kratzmann, Corbet, Dyson, Monte Motorsport, Millings, Williamson, Wormall to name a few, as well as NZ teams Pickerill, Larsen, Duff and Wood. And don’t think for one moment it’s exclusively Sprintcars either as the Dirt Modifieds of Mark Robinson and David Clark and Super Sedans of Pascoe, Knox and Higgs also use KRE powerplants & more recently Trophy Truck dirt race engines for Beau Robinson & Mick Magher.
Much of Ken’s time is utilised upon a motor’s ‘driveability’, Ken conversant with the need for power delivery to be driver friendly rather than succumb to the search of more horsepower. “One example with Shane (Stewart) was at the Classic I thought that he might not have enough power, but Shane said that he couldn’t use what he had. We try to work on the engines having enough power for the time trial, but also driveable for when the track slickens off for the feature race. We also keep in mind that the customers would like 20-25 races before they need a rebuild.”
It is this pragmatic approach that endears KRE to end users, as Ken has built an enviable reputation for his common sense approach putting customer service at the top of his priorities and helping racers whether they are a KRE customer or not at the race track. It is this down to earth approach that customers value, Ken revealing, “Even though we have some high profile Speedway and Supercar teams we still look after the single racers with a limited budget.
We have now built the business up so we can concentrate on R&D testing. We are constantly improving our Sprintcar engines and in house dyno testing so we can offer upgrades once they have been tested for power and reliability. With his time at a premium, Ken admits, “As part of growing the business it has made a massive difference in having more staff to keep the jobs moving and be able to offer our customers quick and reliable services.
The KRE Team
With time consuming work such as the demands of the Supercar race program, KRE has specific staff that are dedicated to each section, “we have two fulltime Engine Builders, Qualified & Apprentice machinists, workshop and admin staff helping Wendy and I run the business”. Our son Ryan joined KRE in 2015 and completed his Engine Reconditioning Trade in our machine shop leaving in 2023 to grow his Adrenaline Driven merchandise label “Locked Down Brand” which is continuing to grow rapidly worldwide. Our daughter Tegan worked in our admin for a few years but is now also pursuing her passion in interior design with her business Mosaic Interiors formed in 2024.
State of the Art New Facilities
August 2018 saw KRE move to our own workshop at Redland Bay. We were able to customise and fit out the workshop to suit our specific business needs. We have new offices, a meeting room, four separate engine assembly bays, separate engine stripping room, wash room, servicing room and two dyno and console rooms and an air conditioned machine shop which enables us to do 90% of our engine machining in house with the exception of some block work that we outsource. The upstairs mezzanine houses our spare parts and engine storage areas.
The Superflow dynos are set up so we can mount the fuel pump, MSD box and fuel lines to replicate the cars as close as possible for speedway or setup the same as the Supercar engine, so all the mapping can be precisely tuned for power and fuel economy. Both dynos have an array of sensors and data, so just about anything can be tested and a docking cart system allows us to change motors over efficiently. The rooms are set up for good airflow so we get repeatable results.
We are passionate about KRE and what we can achieve for our customers and look forward to what the future of KRE brings to our business.