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Born in Invercargill on the South Island, Jason’s interest in motorsport started with his father who raced in Speedway. He went karting from around 10 years old and continued until he couldn’t afford it anymore. Then the next best thing was to become a mechanic!
“When I was 13, we moved to Australia. Mum and Dad just thought it was a better opportunity, I guess they weren’t going anywhere, and decided they would pack up and have a go in Brisbane,” Jason said.
The path to where he is today, started when he gave away the karting in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and joined Stone Brothers Racing in 2004, pretty much fresh out of school.
But at that time, there were no formal motorsport apprenticeships. Initially, he swept floors and picked up parts, essentially being the gofer. He even managed to attend some race meetings where he was assigned such tasks as sorting tyres and attending pit equipment.
The team drivers in 2004 and 2005 were Marcus Ambrose and Russell Ingall, and then James Courtney came in to join Ingall for 2006 when Ambrose went off the United States.
By then Jason started traveling fulltime with the team and looked after Jonothan Webb’s car in the Development Series from 2006 to 2007.
“I did two years with Jono. Then when Shane [Van Gisbergen] came on with Team Kiwi late in 2007 I did all his rounds, and when we weren’t doing that, it was DVS rounds with Jono.”
Jason’s role had expanded to include mechanical work on engines and suspensions, and the preparation cars for racing.
After a season with Jason Bright, he worked with Tim Slade on the Wilson’s Security Falcon from 2010 to 2012, initially as the #2 mechanic and before he became the #1 mechanic.
The following year, the team was sold to Erebus where he continued with Slade on the Mercedes-AMG E63. Jason recalls a significant challenge at Bathurst where one of the three Mercedes was crashed on the Thursday and had to rebuilt in three days.
“We had one of the home guys bring a van down with some parts. We replaced nine bars in the chassis, welded in with our fabricator at the track and yeah, basically worked three days straight with no sleep, and got the car back out on Saturday morning.
“We shortcut on a few things, just to get the car out there for that [final practice] session. Then we pretty much worked all Saturday night to finish fixing the bits that we shortcut on.
“We got it out for the warm up and we finished the race on the Sunday. So that was quite a cool achievement, even though we didn’t get the result we wanted.”
Then at the end of end of ‘13, the team dropped back to two cars, so Jason looked elsewhere. That turned out to be Dick Johnson Racing where he was hands on with David Wall’s Falcon.
“They went to one car in 2015, and my kids were growing up. I was missing a lot with them from all the racing, and Matt was looking for someone to basically run his Super 2 program. So, I joined Matt Stone Racing and yeah, been here ever since.”
He worked with Todd Hazelwood and Shae Davies on a pair of FG Falcons and finished the 2015 season fourth and eighth respectively. It was here that Jason achieved a significant career highlight when Hazelwood won the Dunlop Super 2 title in 2017.
“I did all the prep work on the two cars at the workshop, and then I was on Shae’s car for the race meetings. When Todd won in 2017, I was looking after his car, prepping two VF Commodores the FG share car for Brody Kostecki.”
MSR moved into the Supercars Championship in 2018 with Hazelwood. At first the team used an ex-DJR Team Penske FGX Falcon before they switched to their Super 2 wining VF. The next year MSR had an ex-Triple Eight ZB Commodore.
The team expanded to two cars for 2020 with Garry Jacobson in one car, and Jake Kostecki and Zane Goddard down to share the other.
Jason talks about the transition from the Gen 2 to Gen 3 Supercars and the challenges it brought. “Interesting! A lot of things came through late, which made it hard, but no I think, it’s just the part of the sport.
“A new generation comes through, and you do the best you can with it. I think it’s been good for the sport . . . that we sort of needed. I think the old Gen 2 cars are outdated. We were the first Chev team to have a car built and on track. I think that was pretty cool.”
Jason says the development that you can do on the Gen 3 car is quite minimal. “Everyone’s running the same equipment now. It’s all about what you can do to make yourself better.
“It’s definitely good for the sport, because there’s a lot more teams can go out and win races, whereas the old cars it was sort of, you had your top three or four teams and everyone else was sort of fighting over the rest.”
The team had its breakthrough race win at Hidden Valley last year with Jack Le Brocq. Then Nick Percat had victories at Albert Park and Symmons Plains this year.
“Going up on the podium [for the team trophy] at AGP was quite cool.”
Jason has had many great memories that started with SBR championship wins in 2004 and 2005 in his first two years with the race team. He also rates Slade’s 2012 results in Abu Dhabi.
“Winning the Super 2 title with Todd. We were up against PD [Paul Dumbrell] with pretty good support from Triple 8 to Egglestons, and to knock him off was a pretty cool achievement. We went to Newcastle down on points and yeah, I think we topped every session that weekend.”
While he says he has worked with many great drivers, he finds it difficult to rate any above the others, because he reckons they all do some cool stuff.
“Guys like Scotty Mac [McLaughlin] and Shane, working with them, then seeing them go overseas and doing what they’re doing is pretty cool. Scotty did DVS with Stones and Shane had his first test day with us in Jono’s car and I think he was 16 at the time.
“Shane’s natural talent, what he can feel in the car is unbelievable. He can jump in anything and work it out in a very short space of time and be competitive. From drifting to rallying, you name it, he’s good at it. He’s just got that natural ability.
“Brody came back from the States. He got in the car, and you could tell like he was going to do some good things. I worked with like Helio Castroneves at Gold Coast for two years, he drove the back half when we did the International races . . . guys like David Brabham, yeah.”
Jason currently oversees MSR’s mechanics, ensures the highest standards and smooth operations. He expressed satisfaction with his role, the future at MSR and the importance of teamwork and the satisfaction of a race finish from such a challenge.
“I got no real reason to leave. Matt’s good to work for. He’s good to me. I think we’re a team on the up. We’re a small team and working pretty hard, and we’re knocking off some of these bigger teams, which is quite cool.”
