Pye confident about 2024 Supercars prospects

Scott Pye is confident about his future in Supercars at a time when he is one of the key pieces of the silly season puzzle.

The race winner is on the market after Team 18 opted to recruit David Reynolds as team-mate to Mark Winterbottom, who is in the first year of his latest, multi-year contract.

In theory, as many as half of the 24 seats on the 2024 Supercars Championship could be in play, although the real-world picture is thought to be that no more than Matt Stone Racing, the Blanchard Racing Team, and PremiAir Racing have berths still available.

MSR confirmed a multi-year contract to retain rookie Cameron Hill a day ago, while Pye has been linked to the other, race-winning Camaro entry at the Yatala-based squad.

Asked about his silly season prospects, he told Speedcafe, “I really enjoyed working with the bunch of people [at Team 18] but I’m excited now for what’s ahead.

“There’s still good opportunity in good teams. Obviously, there’s the one really that everyone’s talked about a lot, but I feel confident and in a good spot.

“All I can really do is go to Sandown and then we might have an announcement pre-Sandown, we may not, but for me the focus is still driving a race car.

“I’ve got to go to Sandown [and] get a result. I’m pretty confident it will all work out.”

Intriguingly, Speedcafe has now heard that rumours of Nick Percat’s demise as a full-time driver may prove to be premature.

Percat is leaving Walkinshaw Andretti United after a two-year spell back at Clayton which clearly did not work out as either party would have liked.

The 2011 Bathurst 1000 winner was thought to be destined for co-driving at best but his prospects of staying on the grid have now apparently improved.

How he would fit into the picture is not clear, with BRT expected to field James Courtney and Aaron Love next year, although neither have been announced and PremiAir has similarly not confirmed James Golding and Tim Slade for 2024 yet.

Meanwhile, Team 18 completed pre-enduro testing at Winton earlier this week, with Pye sharing his #20 Camaro with Warren Luff in the reunion of a duo which has twice finished on the podium together at the Repco Bathurst 1000.

“[It went] Really well,” said Pye.

“Days like [Wednesday] are really about getting the co-drivers as many laps as possible, so I did the minimal amount of work while Luffy got to do the majority and it all went really well.

“Had some challenging pit stops but hopefully we get on top of that before next week. I think the driver changes went really well in the pits.

“It’s interesting, the new cars are a lot harder to get in and out of, but luckily Luffy and I are the same size so we didn’t have to worry about things like seats and things like that. We plugged straight in, so that was a little bit easier than what I was expecting.

“Then we ran through a massive programme, so got plenty of testing done.

“Luffy’s really comfortable and confident now, did some starts for the first time in the new car, so I think all of those things are important.”

Practice for the 2023 Sandown 500 starts next Friday.