The South Australian had a broadside for his old team in his podium television interview at the MSS Security Melbourne SuperSprint, where he broke a victory drought of three-and-a-half years in just his second event with MSR.
In doing so, he became the first driver outside of Triple Eight Race Engineering to win a race so far in 2024, and is now fourth in the drivers’ championship, having finished 15th in his first season at WAU and slumped to 20th in his second.
“The last 18 months, I hated every second of that mob,” said Percat.
“Honestly, the moment I walked into MSR, I knew this was where I needed to be.
“So, a huge thank you to everyone.”
Elaborating on that sentiment on the post-race press conference, he was hesitant to put the triumph up with his 2011 Bathurst 1000 win or the 2016 victory in his home event, the Adelaide 500.
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Nevertheless, it was “massive” under the circumstances.
“It’s hard to compare this to Bathurst or Adelaide 500, but I think the story of what I’ve dealt with for a couple years probably makes it a massive win for me,” explained Percat.
“Yeah, it was a fun race. Obviously, early when I got to third, I could see [Matt] Payne and Chaz [Mostert] looked like they weren’t actually that quick and my game plan was get to the lead, made easier when Chaz made a little mistake.
“Then I wanted to play the kind of opposite game of what these blokes [Triple Eight’s Will Brown and Broc Feeney] have been doing and it was trying to stretch the field, make them chase me, minimal tyre save, and just see what happened.
“It kind of obviously worked out well. I didn’t want to have a freight train of a battle, I wanted to just clear out.
“I knew these two would be really fast and just wanted to have a battle where, if one of us ended up in the grass or you locked a front and went off, you only lost one spot and not 10.
“So, it was cool, the car was amazing, the boys did a really good job, so it was an enjoyable race.”
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