PremiAir on Monday confirmed Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser as its two drivers for 2026 in a move that had been mooted for some months.
Stanaway, however, publicly declared earlier this month that he had a two-year deal with the team and was fully expecting to race on.
It’s believed his deal to join the team this season included an option for 2026, which he was informed last week would not be taken up.
“It was a bit of a shock to me,” Stanaway told Speedcafe of PremiAir’s decision.
“I feel like I’ve been driving as good as I ever have been, so I had envisioned myself being on the grid next year.
“It was definitely a bit of a surprise, but it is what it is, and I just want to thank everyone that’s supported me over the last couple of years.
“We just need to put our heads down and try and finish up the year strong.”
Stanaway made clear he’s keen to race on as a co-driver in 2026, joining a busy market that includes retiring full-timers James Courtney and Nick Percat.
“I’m just looking for a co-drive, there’s no options for me to stay full time, and the priority for me to move forward racing full-time was continuity,” he said.
“I’ve never had the luxury of starting a Supercar season in the same car with the same team, with similar people around me and I wasn’t going to get that if I started looking elsewhere.
“So for me I’m in co-driver mode now, just to see what’s out there.”
Stanaway sits 22nd in the championship ahead of this weekend’s Gold Coast 500 amid a challenging season for the PremiAir squad.
The PremiAir exit is the latest blow in Stanaway’s snakes and ladders career, which included retiring to New Zealand at the end of 2019.
Stanaway famously returned as a wildcard at Bathurst in 2022 and won the Great Race the following year as a co-driver at Triple Eight.
The Kiwi scored a full-time return at Grove in 2024 before scoring yet another lifeline at PremiAir ahead of this year.
Asked if it feels like the end of his full-time chances, he said: “This time it does, yeah.
“I think, being out of it the first time [at the end of 2019], I was still pretty young, and it made sense for me to come back and all that.
“But it’s been four years of pretty hard work to get to this point where I was just looking for some consistency and some continuity.
“I think it’s a pretty tall order for me to come back from this.”
The fact Stanaway has not succeeded as a full-time Supercars driver remains somewhat mystifying considering his credentials in junior open-wheel racing and as a co-driver.
Pointing to his form in the closing rounds of 2024 at Grove Racing, Stanaway believes year-to-year continuity was all he needed to fulfill his potential.
“Last year I was with a front-running team, and towards the end of the year, after years of not racing, started to get results,” he said.
“I was on for a top five at Bathurst last year, qualified on the second row, came here [to the Gold Coast], qualified on provisional pole, and then backed it up with a P2 in the Shootout.
“But by the time I started to build momentum there, I left and went to a different team. No one really knows what I would have been capable of with some consistency there.
“I’d known I wasn’t going to be there for quite a long time last year, which is not something that I coped with very easily. It’s not been ideal in either years, really.”
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