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The 22-year-old will take over the ex-DJR Team Penske Ford Mustang which Zak Best drove to second place in this year’s Dunlop Super2 Series after leading for most of the season.
After taking out the Australian Formula Ford title in 2017, Vidau moved into the Porsche system, initially in Michelin Sprint Challenge and then Carrera Cup.
He is now the latest driver to make the jump across to Super2 in order to pursue a career in Supercars.
“I’ve been in Cup Car for two full years now, which has been a great experience,” he told Speedcafe.
“I got the pleasure to work with TekworkX Motorsport, won a whole bunch of races, and got some good results.
“[I am] just excited to make the jump over to the Supercar world. Obviously, a bit of a change to the whole Porsche pyramid, a bit of a different world, but excited to get going.
“Growing up as a kid in Australia, there’s realistically only one way to go as a professional driver in Australia itself,” added the South Australian.
“I love the country and want to stay here, so to get the opportunity to drive main game Supercars here would be amazing.”
Michael Anderson’s squad won the Super3 Series with fellow South Australian Brad Vaughan in 2022 and this year’s Kumho V8 Touring Car title with Jude Bargwanna.
The Super2 effort, which includes the experienced Brendan Hogan as Race Engineer, is unchanged for 2024 except for a new driver, whom Anderson expects can also vie for the crown.
“Max has done a lot of racing,” the Bathurst-based driver/team owner told Speedcafe.
“He’s someone we kept an eye on from end of last year into this year and followed his progression through the whole year.
“We fell just short [of the Super2 title] this year from a racing penalty, and we felt like we ran the best car for the majority of the year.
“We showed why we were the championship leaders from Round 1; we had a good team and a good engineer, and Brendan Hogan’s continuing with AMS next year.
“From there, just kept an eye on a few drivers and Max won at Townsville, podiumed at Adelaide, had a pretty good year overall, and showed good speed. From that, we did a deal and that was it.
“Basically, we’re not going there to make numbers up; we’re going there to win, as we did this year, but we fell just short, so next year we want to make amends for that and win it.”
The most recent Supercars race winner, Grove Racing’s Matt Payne, began the transition from Porsches to Super2 in late-2021, while fellow 2023 Championship rookie Cameron Hill did not join Super2 until last year but then earned a multi-year contract renewal with Matt Stone Racing.
In 2024, they will be joined on the grid by yet another up-and-comer with recent Porsche history, namely Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Ryan Wood, who was the most prolific Super2 race winner in the season just passed.
“Obviously, we saw Ryan Wood do a good job on debut from Sprint Challenge,” noted Vidau.
“[My goal in 2024] Is, basically, win as many races as we can and if we can pull off a championship, that’ll be bloody beautiful.
“There’s a lot of learnings we can do. Obviously, Anderson Motorsport will do a good job to fast-track that for me before we get to Bathurst [Round 1], but it’s going to be a big task in 2024 but I’m excited to get it underway and have a big dip.
“This whole world of motorsport’s very expensive so, for someone to give me a chance, I thank them a lot for the opportunity, and excited to get underway and repay the favour with race wins and hopefully a championship.”
Vidau, who scored three victories on his way to fifth in the 2023 Carrera Cup standings, has already driven a Gen3 Supercar on ride day duties for PremiAir Racing, and has competed in somewhat similar machinery in the TA2 category.
He will test with Anderson at Winton in early-February.
