\u201cIt just leaves us in the mix of the silly season as it tends to be,\u201d Stone told V8 Sleuth of his position for next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re 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\u2019re ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us it\u2019s 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\u2019d be at the start of the year, but it\u2019s certainly not something we\u2019re worried about.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/the-bend-500sat1-55-of-94-1024x576.jpg\")
Matt Stone. Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a team we\u2019re constantly growing in our performance and our procedures. We\u2019ve won races with three different drivers in the last three years, so we\u2019re confident in the team as a group of people and we\u2019ll look forward to the new challenges that await.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stone noted that an all-rookie line-up would not be overly desirable based on past experience \u2013 but that shouldn\u2019t be a factor anyway given how heavily Jack Le Brocq<\/a> has been linked to rejoining the team.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll probably put something out after Bathurst, at least part of the picture, and then we\u2019ll just work through the rest,\u201d Stone said of a timeline for announcements.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point in the year, obviously I can\u2019t say a lot, but it\u2019s all well and truly in progress and we have just got to finish it internally.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the more immediate future, MSR heads into this weekend\u2019s Repco Bathurst 1000 with its strongest ever roster (Percat with Tim Slade<\/a>, Hill with Cameron McLeod<\/a>, plus the Cameron Crick<\/a>\/Aaron Seton<\/a> wildcard) and renewed momentum out of The Bend 500.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first year where we haven\u2019t had rookie days to do that sort of continuous testing,\u201d said Stone.<\/p>\n \u201cQueensland Raceway we were quite disappointed with our performance given it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were very happy with our performance relative to the field at Tailem Bend and we\u2019ve always been strong at Bathurst.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have found our form again, we\u2019re very confident going into this weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s tighter than I want it to be on the two cars in the finals but neither one of them is a long shot; they\u2019re both real legitimate options, we just need to execute a good weekend.<\/p>\n \u201cBoth cars are capable of running top five and getting on the podium, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re going for.\u201d<\/p>\n Percat and Hill are 37 and 51 points back from the finals cut line, respectively.<\/p>\n The Undercut \u2013 The Bathurst 1000 Edition<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bumper show, with the team breaking down the Bathurst 1000, the safety car latest, silly season moves, and much, much more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MATT Stone Racing\u2019s eponymous owner says he is working through plans for his 2026 Supercars driver line-up with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-197016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/bathurst-1000-wednesday-hires-1-63-of-129-1024x576.jpg\")
Nick Percat, Chaz Mostert<\/a> and Mark Winterbottom<\/a> have all won the Bathurst 1000. Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n