{"id":861501,"date":"2026-08-20T02:22:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/861501\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T02:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T02:22:15","slug":"triple-eight-supercars-drivers-return-to-scene-of-sonny-vaccaro-moment-for-2026-boss-andrew-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/861501\/","title":{"rendered":"Triple Eight Supercars driver’s return to scene of Sonny Vaccaro moment for 2026 boss Andrew Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

WILL Brown<\/a> isn\u2019t the only Triple Eight driver looking at Queensland Raceway as a major chance to get back on the horse.<\/p>\n

The most recent of Brown\u2019s 12 Supercars Championship race wins came last August at the 2025 Ipswich Super440, where he capitalised on Broc Feeney<\/a>\u2019s five-second penalty for a false start to take the chocolates.<\/p>\n

The following day, then Triple Eight Super2 driver Jackson Walls<\/a> sprung to life to claim his maiden pole position in the feeder series and converted that into victory.<\/p>\n

It was a performance which won over Objective Racing team principal Andrew Jones, convincing him that Walls was the go-to option from their five-driver shortlist for 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a Sonny Vaccaro moment at Ipswich to be honest\u2026 the guy that started on pole set his intentions pretty heavily on the run to Turn 1 and was able to win that race having not been in that position all year,\u201d Jones explained upon signing Walls.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat for me was the catalyst to go \u2018this guy has just gone up the pecking order in our world\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vaccaro is famous as the Nike executive who took a punt on signing a young Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n

\"\"Andrew Jones during the press conference where he explained the Jackson Walls decision. Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n

Now driving a customer Triple Eight Gen3 Mustang, it has hardly been a straightforward rookie campaign for Walls, who remains without a top 10 start or finish in the Repco Supercars Championship.<\/p>\n

The return to QR for this weekend\u2019s Ipswich Super440 shapes to be a golden opportunity to rectify that record.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to make bold predictions, but at the start of the year we flagged Queensland Raceway as one of the key events for Jackson\u2019s rookie season,\u201d said Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re expecting it should be one of our strongest races of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Making matters potentially more complicated is the fact the Ipswich Super440 will play host to the biggest Supercars grid of the season, with three wildcards (Bayley Hall<\/a>\/Team 18, Ben Gomersall<\/a>\/Tickford, Aaron Seton<\/a>\/Matt Stone Racing) making for a 27-car field.<\/p>\n

Track action starts Friday, with the first of two Supercars practice sessions starting 2:40pm.<\/p>\n

The next Castrol Supercars throwback livery?<\/p>\n

CASTROL have some fantastic liveries available to throw back to at the upcoming round at the Sandown Supercars event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WILL Brown isn\u2019t the only Triple Eight driver looking at Queensland Raceway as a major chance to get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-861501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861501","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=861501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}