Former Triple Eight engineer returns to MSR ranks

Former Jamie Whincup race engineer Wes McDougall has re-emerged in Supercars at Matt Stone Racing.

He previously worked at the Yatala-based outfit as recently as the 2020 season before switching to Triple Eight Race Engineering.

Whincup finished behind only team-mate Shane van Gisbergen in the 2021 campaign but that would be McDougall’s only season at Banyo before leaving due to health reasons.

An MSR spokesperson has confirmed his return, on a consultancy basis.

The role is with the team in general as opposed to a particular entry, and is unlikely to entail travel to events.

Paul Forgie recently arrived this year to engineer rookie Cameron Hill in the #35 Truck Assist Chevrolet Camaro, while Jack Le Brocq still counts Jack Bellotti as his race engineer on Car #34.

Both drove today when the latter’s Camaro was given its shakedown at Queensland raceway.

Despite the day being just a half booking, having been postponed from Tuesday due to bad weather, the two Truck Assist cars have now collectively notched up over 300km.

Le Brocq said, “Stoked to see MSR04 out on track; we gave it a full throttle run on the dyno yesterday before coming out to QR and that brought some huge smiles, but there’s nothing like turning wheels on a race track.

“Massively proud of the effort the boys at Truck Assist Racing have put in over the last few weeks to get us to where we are.

“The livery looks awesome too, so we’re keen to get down to Sydney and put some more running in before Newy.”

Hill remarked, “Busy day being a half-day shakedown with the track only being available until lunchtime, but we achieved a lot and learnt a lot.

“It was cool to see the full livery out on track for the first time too, the Truck Assist Racing Camaro looks amazing on track watching from the pit wall.

“We’ll now take what we have learnt into Sydney and continue building.”

The next outing for MSR will be the championship-wide Sydney Motorsport Park test on February 22, before another outing at Queensland Raceway on an as yet unconfirmed date prior to the Thrifty Newcastle 500 season-opener on March 10-12.