Matt Stone Racing has announced a major overhaul of its engineering line-up a year out from the introduction of Gen3 regulations.
The team has confirmed Tim Newton will continue to engineer the #34 entry driven by Jake Kostecki.
Newton has also stepped up into a senior engineering role while counterpart Jack Bellotti will transition to engineer on the #35 of Zane Goddard.
Since joining the team in 2019, Bellotti has been engineering Jason Gomersall in the Super3 Series as well as acting as data engineer on the #34 last year.
Gomersall is set to have Glenn Seton engineering him in 2021.
Wes McDougall, who left to join Triple Eight Race Engineering as Jamie Whincup’s new race engineer, has effectively been replaced in the organisation by former Team Sydney engineer Nathan Leech.
Leech takes the position of performance engineer at the Yatala-based team.
Sheldon Auhl has also been retained for the team’s Super2 Series campaign with Aaron Seton.
“We look forward to 2021 with the new structure and rollover of two of our 2020 drivers, we hope to build continuity moving forward with results being our top priority,” said Matt Stone.
“I’ve always been a fan of promoting from within and having the opportunity for Tim and Jack step up to new positions in this restructure is a great advantage as they both understand the culture here at MSR and are great engineers for us to build our program around.
“Having Nathan onboard is a great boost for MSR. I have worked with Nathan before in my days at SBR [Stone Brothers Racing] and other small projects since.
“I truly rate Nathan’s talent as an engineer and his calm demeanour in the high pressure of pit lane.”
Newton began working in Supercars in 2007 under the Paul Morris Motorsport banner.
In his time at the team, he worked as a race engineer, team manager, and engineering manager before taking a sabbatical in 2015.
He later returned to the Supercars paddock with Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport and more recently Tekno Autosports [now Team Sydney].
“Over the summer break we undertook an exhaustive audit of operations here at MSR,” said Newton.
“Looking forward to 2021 and again to Gen3 coming online, we have the structures we need to get our two cars deep into the mid-pack.
“Jake and Zane are inspirational young men, Matt has undertaken more upgrades on the facility, we have a really strong mechanics group and great relationship with Triple Eight. The ingredients are there, we just need to deliver on determination and focus.”
Bellotti has domestic and international experience, working with the likes of McElrea Racing in Australia and McLaren in the United Kingdom with its GT programme.
After a two-year spell abroad, Bellotti returned to Australia where he was Jack Le Brocq’s data engineer.
That saw Bellotti work alongside Campbell Little and Adrian Burgess at Tekno.
His time at the team gave him the footing to step up into a MSR race engineer position.
“I’m very pleased that the team has trusted me to step up and engineer on car #35 in the Repco Supercars Championship,” said Bellotti.
“I look forward to working with Zane, the ZB and all the brilliant MSR crew this year.”
The Repco Supercars Championship gets underway with the Mount Panorama 500 on February 26-28.
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