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Brown’s cameo with Richard Childress Racing makes for three current or recent Supercars full-timers in action at the Sonoma NASCAR event next month.
One of them is none other than the man whose departure for the United States opened up a seat for him at Triple Eight Race Engineering, namely Shane van Gisbergen, who is now full-time in the second-tier Xfinity Series.
The other is Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters, who joins Brown in making his Cup debut at the Californian venue after two starts already at Truck level.
Meanwhile, Scott McLaughlin’s fourth Indianapolis 500 campaign is now underway, with his and van Gisbergen’s departure from Supercars, plus Jamie Whincup’s retirement, taking seven of Supercars’ last eight years’ worth of champions out of the category (at least as full-time drivers).
Hypothetically, that could become eight in nine if Brown, the current Supercars Championship leader, emulates van Gisbergen in more ways than one.
However, he has committed his future to the Australian touring car category “for a long time,” in comments made on a Facebook post sharing a report on his NASCAR drive.
“It’s a little disappointing reading the negative comments saying Supercars drivers want to leave the sport,” he wrote.
“Let’s get the facts straight, I will be racing Supercars for a long time as I love it but I would love to add a couple of NASCAR races each year whether we are doing 12 or 20 weekends a year.
“The more races I can do the better I will be. I would say yes to doing Indy car or anything as you get to compare yourself to the best in the world.
“Supercars have acknowledged we aren’t doing enough racing and are going to rectify that, but that’s hard to do over night.”
Van Gisbergen already has 11 Xfinity Series races under his belt this year (plus two in Cup and one in ARCA), whereas there have only been three Repco Supercars Championship events so far in 2024, summing to eight individual races.
Waters made his NASCAR Truck debut at Martinsville in April during the four-week gap (Sunday to Sunday) between the Albert Park and Taupo events, then a second start at Kansas in another four-week gap between Taupo and this weekend’s Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint.
After the stop in Perth, it will be another four weeks to the betr Darwin Triple Crown, by which time Brown and Waters will have made their NASCAR Cup Series debuts.
The former has also added a full-time Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia Powered by AWS campaign to his season, meaning at least 20 weekends of racing for the Toowoomban in 2024 (including February’s Bathurst 12 Hour), although just 12 of those being in Supercars.
Brown’s stance is consistent with that he expressed at last year’s Perth event, when Speedcafe asked him and the rest of a very youthful podium if they considered Supercars a destination or would like to move into another category some day.
“I think we’re all pretty young, we’d probably all say the same; you want to win a Supercars Championship,” said the then-Erebus Motorsport driver.
“I had that in all my junior divisions. I didn’t want to move on until you won the championship, and Supercars is the highest level in Australian motorsports, so I’m really happy with where we’re at.
“But, I’m sure none of us would turn down an opportunity to race in NASCAR or anything like that, or what Scott McLaughlin’s done.
“You know, it’s obviously an awesome thing that he’s gone over and competed in.”
Brown’s approach is a contrast to that of Red Bull Ampol Racing team-mate Broc Feeney, who opted out of debuts in the 24 Hours of Spa and Indianapolis 8 Hour in one of Triple Eight’s own Mercedes-AMGs in order to concentrate on Supercars.
Practice 1 for the Perth SuperSprint starts tomorrow at 14:20 local time/16:20 AEST.
