The squad handed its long-standing academy driver an evaluation day at Winton on Tuesday in the #99 Camaro regularly driven by Todd Hazelwood.

The Gen3 laps followed an impressive start to the Super2 season from Stewart, who put his Erebus/Image Racing entry on the front row for race 2 at Bathurst before finishing second.

According to Erebus CEO Ryan, Stewart was similarly impressive during the Gen3 evaluation – to the point that Ryan labelled him a “star of the future”.

“Jobe did an amazing job on a hot day at Winton,” he said.

“[Having] been with the Erebus Academy since he was 12, Jobe is well know to the team and, as Jobe does, prepared very well for the evaluation day under the always watchful eye of Wayne Mackie who is his Super2 race engineer and an important part of our overall engineering group.

“Jobe worked with regular [main game] race engineers George [Commins] and Tom [Moore] really well on the day and as soon as they knew he was on the pace he performed some valuable testing for the engineers and provided amazing feedback.

“Todd did his 10 laps in the morning and set the baseline for how the car and track was that day, Jobe learnt a lot about how to get the most out of a Gen3 Camaro and listened, learnt and actioned everything he was asked to.

“Jobe has certainly shown us that he will be a star of the future as he exceeded our expectations with both outright pace and race pace consistency.”

Erebus looks to have its roster full for this season, with David Russell and Jayden Ojeda set to drive for the squad at the endurance races.

However there is feasibly a full-time spot up for the grabs in the longer term given Brodie Kostecki is unlikely to return.

Erebus is undeniably a renowned promoter of young talent to the top tier of Supercars.

The team gave Anton De Pasquale his break in the main game before undergoing a rebuild following its split with David Reynolds for the 2021 season that saw Will Brown and Kostecki promoted to Supercars.

Both Brown and Kostecki went on to become race winners with Erebus while Kostecki sealed a first drivers’ title with the team last season.

Equally undeniable are questions over the team’s ability to retain the very talent it fosters, something in the spotlight after Brown made an off-season move to Triple Eight, while Kostecki is yet to appear on the Supercars grid this year.

He remains technically under contract with Erebus, with Hazelwood filling in on a round-by-round basis, however there appears to be no short-term resolution in sight for what is understood to be a falling out with team management.