NICK Percat has shed light on his split with Matt Stone Racing for the first time.

Percat is the most successful Supercars Championship driver in MSR history, accounting for two of its four wins and five of its nine podiums.

But it became clear by mid-2025 that relations between driver and team had taken a turn for the worse, and Percat ultimately opted to retire from full-time racing at season’s end despite being under contract for another two years.

Having long refrained from speaking out about the situation, Percat shared some fresh insights via the Lucky Dogs Podcast co-hosted by Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown as he settles into life co-driving with Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney.

“The first year was good,” Percat began, having joined MSR ahead of 2024.

“The second year started good, like far out, 1-2 at the Grand Prix.

Cameron Hill and Nick Percat embrace after sealing Matt Stone Racing’s maiden 1-2. Pic: Mark Walker

“And then to be honest, I don’t really know what happened behind the scenes.

“I think I’m very black and white so I was like ‘well, when we’re doing things wrong, we should probably fix it’ and it just didn’t get perceived that well.

“But when you go to a successful team that’s winning and those conversations are had, that’s a normal conversation.

“They would always be like ‘Nick, you’re upset with us so you’re just saying this stuff’ and I would be like ‘I’m not actually upset, I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to lead you in the right direction’.”

At which point Brown interjected: “We always say that at Triple Eight: nothing’s personal.

“You can’t take stuff personally because we’re a team that’s trying to move forward. If you take it as personal, you can’t give people criticism then.”

Having been a fixture on the Supercars grid for the past 12 years, Percat admitted he will miss being in the thick of the action when the Dunlop Sydney 500 gets going next month.

“Not being in the field sucks,” said the man who runs Toyota 86 and karting operation JND Racing.

“But at that point when there’s all this crap going on in the team, I was like ‘I have been around long enough. You know what? Say what you want, do what you want, it does not bother me. But I have a two-year deal so you need to sort it out’. Like I had two more years to go…

“I heard the rumours that I wasn’t driving at Ipswich and it was the same week that I had a meeting to take over the Parolin karting import (with JND). I was like, ‘is the world telling me something? Maybe this is the right time to do it’.”

The kicker was having a slight foot in the door at Triple Eight, having been approached by Jamie Whincup when he’d previously been at a career crossroads in the second half of 2023.

“If I didn’t have that in the back of my mind, on the backburner, I probably would have fought Matt a lot harder to stay,” said Percat.

Given Cameron Hill elected to depart for Brad Jones Racing, it will be an all-new MSR driver line-up in 2026 with rookie Zach Bates and the returning Jack Le Brocq.