THE new year is here and so it’s officially eyes forward to the coming season for Supercars’ drivers and teams.
There has been a substantial changing of the guard with fresh faces accounting for a quarter of the full-time grid, and it’s bound to be a big 12 months for many, as V8 Sleuth explores below (sorted by surname alphabetical order).
Kai Allen (Grove Racing)
Get that first win on the board.
Allen’s 2025 campaign was superb, as he became one of two rookie drivers in the past 50 championship seasons to chalk up five or more podiums.
Next on the to-do list is to reach the top step.
He still has six rounds and 19 races to become the fifth driver to win a championship race before his 21st birthday…
Zach Bates (Matt Stone Racing)
Get himself on the Cameron Hill trajectory.
Three years ago, another Canberran came into MSR as a rookie with Jack Le Brocq as his teammate. Things have worked out pretty well for Hill.
Bates’ turn.
Will Brown (Triple Eight)
Rebound in a big way.
Brown was the first to admit that his title defence did not go to plan, and it’s probably fair to say the end-of-season leaderboard flattered him (especially the fact he beat teammate Broc Feeney to the runner-up mantle).
The Queenslander is a champion, is teamed with arguably the number one race engineer in the category, and drives for the most successful team. The ingredients are there.
However, fixing qualifying is a must after being outdone 32-2 by Feeney across 2025.
Matt Payne, Will Brown and Zach Bates. Pic: Supplied/Jack Martin
Aaron Cameron (Blanchard Racing Team)
Leverage Adelaide momentum into a flying start.
How incumbent Cameron fares against incoming teammate James Golding will be fascinating and could well decide if he becomes a long-term player in the category.
The Victorian made strong progress throughout his rookie season, culminating in a stunning front-row start in Adelaide.
Sydney Motorsport Park is the last track (other than Ruapuna) where he’s yet to race a Supercar, but beyond that there should be opportunity for regular results.
Anton De Pasquale (Team 18)
Carry the torch.
ADP is the guy that General Motors fans are counting on in 2026.
He and Team 18 gelled well in their first year together, blending strong pace with some improved aggression behind the wheel.
A couple of race wins would have to be the aim for year two.
Broc Feeney (Triple Eight)
To just get up and go again.
The early phase of Feeney’s career has been filled with prolific success against a backdrop of high-profile heartache at Bathurst or in the title fight.
But that’s how the cookie crumbles sometimes. It took Shane van Gisbergen a long time to win a championship and even longer to conquer the Mountain, but once he did, the floodgates opened.
Feeney has trust the same will ring true for him.
Declan Fraser (PremiAir Racing)
Ensure he’s not the number two.
From the outside looking in, a couple of decisions in PremiAir’s fresh start have pointed to Jayden Ojeda being the chosen one – i.e. that he got the headstart to replace Richie Stanaway last November, and he was assigned star co-driver David Russell for the enduros.
Fraser is ultra hungry to make his second coming a success, and getting off to a reasonable start will go a long way towards getting the wheels in motion on his side of the garage.
Declan Fraser. Pic: Ross Gibb
James Golding (Blanchard Racing Team)
To lead.
This season will be the first where James Golding is the older head (having been younger than previous teammates Garth Tander, Richie Stanaway, Chris Pither and Tim Slade).
Golding is not far removed from his run to seventh in the 2024 standings, so he very much can do it. Now it’s time to deliver in his age-30 season.
Rylan Gray (Dick Johnson Racing)
Embrace the pressure.
Driving for the most historic team in Supercars comes with strings attached – i.e. a bucketload of expectations.
Gray has done some special things already in his career, but this is deep end stuff, especially when you’re getting directly compared to the superstar that is Brodie Kostecki (and who DJR has moulded itself around).
Stay patient, young fella.
André Heimgartner (Brad Jones Racing)
Reassert himself as a frequent frontrunner.
Heimgartner had a super 2023 and backed that up with a special race win to break BJR’s drought.
Last season though was disappointing, predominantly caused by qualifying struggles.
BJR has a knack of getting up to speed quickly in new machinery, so the shift into a Supra could be a catalyst for an upturn.
Cameron Hill (Brad Jones Racing)
Bring his qualifying A-game again.
The Canberran has gotten better and better with each and every season in the Supercars Championship, and qualifying was a definite strongpoint for him last year.
Given BJR’s forever tendency to race better than they qualify, Hill should be well positioned to succeed if he keeps nailing those one-lap efforts.
Cameron Hill. Pic: Mark Walker
Macauley Jones (Brad Jones Racing)
Do enough to keep the critics at bay.
Jones Jr had some really, really good moments in 2025 to quieten the naysayers.
Mechanical reliability and some inconsistencies of his own prevented a better championship ranking, but the platform is there for him to keep banging in some decent numbers.
Brodie Kostecki (Dick Johnson Racing)
Up the ante.
The great DJR rebuild provided sporadic glimmers of dominance.
The Shell squad has talked a big game about now having all the right pieces in the right places, and no longer having the distraction of Ford homologation/engine duties, so it now is go time.
Making the Adelaide Grand Final would represent a pass mark.
Jack Le Brocq (Matt Stone Racing)
Get back to his best.
JLB and MSR are a comfortable fit.
Le Brocq’s Erebus tenure finished on a low (no top 10 results in his final 13 races there), but it was at MSR where he showed his career-best form.
Chaz Mostert (Walkinshaw Andretti United)
Avoid the championship hangover.
The last two title defences have hardly gone to plan, for Kostecki and Brown.
Mostert had to wait so long to get his first crown. Now he’s got the coveted #1, he has the chance to create his own little dynasty.
Cooper Murray (Erebus Motorsport)
Convert.
Murray and Erebus undoubtedly have the speed to be troubling podiums and seriously challenging for a finals berth. Execution will decide whether that does or does not happen.
Jayden Ojeda (PremiAir Racing)
Grab this chance with both hands.
It felt like Jayden Ojeda and the main game maybe just weren’t to be, but here we are at long last.
There is clearly some rebuilding to be done at PremiAir so it mightn’t be all glory from day one, but if Ojeda can bed himself in, surely Roland Dane will give him the tools soon enough.
Matt Payne (Grove Racing)
Don’t be derailed by distractions.
Payne really had an outstanding 2025 and should be poised to challenge again in ’26 – so long as things don’t go haywire with whatever is going on in the background regarding him being linked to GM/Team 18.
Perhaps the fact Allen and not Payne was named in Grove Racing’s Bathurst 12 Hour was a coincidence, and so too the recent bumper contract extension for Allen, but perhaps not.
These things tend to either boil over and be forgotten, or linger…
Thomas Randle (Tickford Racing)
Fight for wins.
Since his two-year contract extension through 2027 was announced in early June, Randle has yet to record a top five result.
It’s important he rectifies that swiftly and gives Tickford a proper one-two punch once more.
David Reynolds (Team 18)
Don’t leave it too late.
This could well be Reynolds’ last hurrah. It’s sometimes been a battle to put it all together since joining Team 18, but he sure stepped up on the big stage that was Bathurst last year.
Everyone knows that the last four rounds on the calendar (Bathurst, Gold Coast, Sandown, Adelaide) are good tracks for Reynolds, but he needs to get on a roll in the first half in order to have something to fight for when those happy hunting grounds arrive.
Jobe Stewart (Erebus Motorsport)
Take his chances when they come.
Stewart is very highly rated in the paddock and Erebus has proven itself capable of putting rookies in winning positions (e.g. Brown at Sydney 2021, Murray last year at Bathurst).
Jackson Walls (Triple Eight/SCT)
Defy the doubters.
A bit like Jones, Walls appears to have a legion of critics ready at the waiting simply because of who his father is.
The kid can drive, from what he’s shown in Carrera Cup and Super2, and there’s no better environment to thrive in than Triple Eight.
Cam Waters (Tickford Racing)
No more ‘next year’.
Waters should take inspiration from Mostert that the elusive big prize can one day be attainable.
Season 2026 looms as his latest window of opportunity to strike, at a time when two major opponents (Triple Eight and WAU) are getting to grips with new manufacturers.
Ryan Wood (Walkinshaw Andretti United)
Simply do his bit.
Wood proved himself in 2025, far better than the results line would suggest.
He was extremely quick but incredibly unlucky. Now the slate is wiped clean, it’s important not to try too hard to make amends.