{"id":36370,"date":"2025-08-01T02:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T02:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36370\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T02:03:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T02:03:14","slug":"nascar-news-supercars-champ-will-brown-set-for-surprise-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/36370\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR news: Supercars champ Will Brown set for surprise return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DBP_25CHI1_250705_NW20083.jpg\" alt=\"Supercars champ poised for surprise NASCAR return\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWill Brown in Chicago. Image: Supplied<\/p>\n<p>Brown, who described his deal to run in the Cup Series at the Chicago street course in July as two years in the making, was taken out in a multi-car crash on just the third lap.<\/p>\n<p>In the wake of that disappointment, Kaulig Racing is understood to have invited the Queenslander back to tackle the Portland road course on August 30.<\/p>\n<p>While Brown\u2019s deal is yet to be confirmed, Kaulig announced this week that it has parted ways with one of its three full-time Xfinity drivers, Josh Williams.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKaulig Racing will field the No. 11 Chevrolet with multiple drivers over the remaining 12 NASCAR Xfinity Series races,\u201d the team said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMore announcements regarding the driver line-up will be forthcoming.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the first replacement driver confirmed ahead of this weekend\u2019s race at Iowa is Spire Cup Series regular Carson Hocevar, who triggered the Chicago crash that took out Brown.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/speedcafe.com\/nascar-news-2025-chicago-crash-will-brown-kaulig-racing-carson-hocevar-pile-up-comments-reaction\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Will Brown\u2019s NASCAR return cruelled by multi-car pile-up<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Kaulig Racing president Chris Rice teased a surprise for Portland when elaborating on the team\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you look at the next four weeks there are some opportunities to go and judge and grade the Xfinity program,\u201d he told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou know, we\u2019ve got to get our Xfinity program back to where we\u2019re contending for wins and trophy hunting and doing different things like that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes, you know, we were going to take a fourth car to places just to figure that out. Now we can do it with the third car.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, looking at it over the next four weeks, I think it\u2019s a pretty good lineup and I think everybody\u2019s going to be surprised with the standalone race that\u2019s coming up in Portland.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The addition of Brown would make for two Australians in the Portland field as Jack Perkins is already announced to compete aboard a Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago Xfinity winner Shane van Gisbergen will not tackle Portland as the Cup Series is racing at Darlington on the same weekend.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s already been a big week for Brown following an announcement on Wednesday that he\u2019s<a href=\"https:\/\/speedcafe.com\/supercars-news-will-brown-broc-feeney-re-sign-triple-eight-long-term-deals-2029-jamie-whincup\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> extended his Triple Eight deal through 2029.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Brown\u2019s NASCAR forays have been backed by Triple Eight co-owners Earl Evans and Steve Blackmore, as well as Boost co-founder turned MobileX boss Peter Adderton.<\/p>\n<p>Triple Eight teammate Broc Feeney also harbours NASCAR ambitions but efforts to stitch together an Xfinity road course program with Kaulig this year proved unsuccessful.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear what impact Triple Eight\u2019s Supercars switch from Chevrolet to Ford for 2026 will have on either driver\u2019s future NASCAR prospects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Brown in Chicago. Image: Supplied Brown, who described his deal to run in the Cup Series at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,12357,85,7500,14594],"class_list":{"0":"post-36370","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-slot1","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-triple-eight","17":"tag-will-brown"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36370","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=36370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}