Le Brocq: Erebus reaping rewards of long building phase

Jack Le Brocq has opened up on what enticed him to move from Matt Stone Racing to Erebus Motorsport for next year’s Supercars Championship.

While there is the obvious attraction of joining the squad which leads the drivers’ championship and was, until recently, one-two in that contest, Le Brocq has hardly had a fruitless year himself.

He qualified on pole position for the first time at Hidden Valley in June and converted that into his second race win in the competition, in the #34 Truck Assist Camaro.

The pole and victory also happened to be the first for MSR, which debuted in the top tier with two wildcard starts in 2017 before going full-time in 2018 and expanding to two cars in 2020.

Erebus, on the other hand, has been in the Supercars Championship for just over a decade now, a run made up of two distinctly different eras.

While the first of those saw limited success running Mercedes-AMGs out of the Gold Coast for the initial three years after taking over Stone Brothers Racing, the move of the Supercars programme to Melbourne and switch to General Motors machinery in 2016 predates MSR’s Super2 Series title in 2017.

That title came months after Erebus won the Great Race and, just over five years later, it became the team to beat in Supercars.

“It’s hard to look past the results they’re having,” Le Brocq told the Speedcafe Podcast.

“They’ve been building for a long time – I saw that early on, when they first stepped into Supercars – and I suppose, when these opportunities come around, I’m not getting any younger; I’ve got no hair as it is.

“So, I suppose it’s an opportunity that came up and we jumped on it.

“It’s one of those things where I tried to put myself in the best position to capitalise on where I am in my career and Matty’s definitely running an awesome programme and he’s on the up and he’s on the build [but] they’re probably four or five years behind where Erebus are now.

“So, it’s bittersweet because I obviously love the guys at MSR and Matty – I’ve got a lot of time for all of them and take with me a lot of friendships that will be had for many years to come – but just one of those things that popped up.

“A lot of consideration went into it to work it whether it was the best move for myself and what the future looked like there.”

The chance to move to Erebus came up because Will Brown is joining Triple Eight Race Engineering to replace Shane van Gisbergen.

As Le Brocq noted, he has been part of the Erebus fold already, having competed with success in its Australian GT programme when present-day CEO Barry Ryan was General Manager.

He then debuted in Super2 with Image Racing as an Erebus Academy driver in 2014, and made his first appearance in the Championship as an enduro co-driver in one of the Mercedes-AMGs in 2015.

“We’ve been using the saying ‘going home’ and it does feel like that in a way,” said the 31-year-old.

“Betty [Klimenko, owner] and Barry and Daniel [Klimenko] gave us the opportunity many years ago so it definitely feels like that for sure. It’s exciting.

“It came around last-minute as I suppose everything else did – a bit out of the blue – but very, very lucky and fortunate to have the opportunity to step into a team that’s leading the championship and having a really good run at the moment.

“It’s cool, I’m excited, I’m looking forward to it, but we’ll see how the rest of the year plays out first.

“Hopefully we can finish the year on a high for Matty boy and then hit the ground running in ’24.”