MATT Stone Racing’s eponymous owner says he is working through plans for his 2026 Supercars driver line-up with a double change now a certainty.
Cameron Hill has already signed with Brad Jones Racing, while Nick Percat last night announced his impending retirement as a full-timer.
“It just leaves us in the mix of the silly season as it tends to be,” Stone told V8 Sleuth of his position for next year.
“We’re not unfamiliar with this time of year and this sort of stuff and we always just work diligently in the background on our plans and release them when we’re ready.
“For us it’s not unexpected, we were aware of it. We wanted to carry continuity forward so a double driver change is probably not where we thought we’d be at the start of the year, but it’s certainly not something we’re worried about.
Matt Stone. Pic: Mark Walker
“As a team we’re constantly growing in our performance and our procedures. We’ve won races with three different drivers in the last three years, so we’re confident in the team as a group of people and we’ll look forward to the new challenges that await.”
Stone noted that an all-rookie line-up would not be overly desirable based on past experience – but that shouldn’t be a factor anyway given how heavily Jack Le Brocq has been linked to rejoining the team.
“We’ll probably put something out after Bathurst, at least part of the picture, and then we’ll just work through the rest,” Stone said of a timeline for announcements.
“At this point in the year, obviously I can’t say a lot, but it’s all well and truly in progress and we have just got to finish it internally.”
As for the more immediate future, MSR heads into this weekend’s Repco Bathurst 1000 with its strongest ever roster (Percat with Tim Slade, Hill with Cameron McLeod, plus the Cameron Crick/Aaron Seton wildcard) and renewed momentum out of The Bend 500.
Nick Percat, Chaz Mostert and Mark Winterbottom have all won the Bathurst 1000. Pic: Mark Walker
“This is the first year where we haven’t had rookie days to do that sort of continuous testing,” said Stone.
“Queensland Raceway we were quite disappointed with our performance given it’s our home track, but then we were able to have that second test for the year and we probably attribute a lot of that day to finding our feet again.
“We were very happy with our performance relative to the field at Tailem Bend and we’ve always been strong at Bathurst.
“To have found our form again, we’re very confident going into this weekend.
“It’s tighter than I want it to be on the two cars in the finals but neither one of them is a long shot; they’re both real legitimate options, we just need to execute a good weekend.
“Both cars are capable of running top five and getting on the podium, so that’s what we’re going for.”
Percat and Hill are 37 and 51 points back from the finals cut line, respectively.
The Undercut – The Bathurst 1000 Edition
It’s a bumper show, with the team breaking down the Bathurst 1000, the safety car latest, silly season moves, and much, much more!