The signing of Jones to partner Anton De Pasquale represents arguably the biggest gamble of the endurance co-driver field for 2025.
Jones, 26, is a two-time Carrera Cup Australia champion but is yet to race a Supercar at any level and will be thrown into the deep end at The Bend and Bathurst in Team 18’s lead entry.
The Queenslander was signed up after an evaluation day at The Bend last December but, with private testing all-but abolished this year, has had precious little running since.
Team 18 has vowed to give him the bulk of the laps in car #18 during the full field test at Ipswich on August 12 and will also run an evaluation day for the driver at Winton in the lead-up to The Bend 500.
“Harri’s a bright star of the future in our eyes,” team principal Adrian Burgess told Speedcafe.
“It’s frustrating you can’t give him more laps and see earlier in the year how good he is, but we believe he’s going to be good, otherwise we wouldn’t have signed him.
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“He’s dominated the series he’s in for the last few years and we’re happy to give him a chance. We’re a bit surprised why other people haven’t given him a chance earlier on.
“He fits into the team really well, he comes down to the workshop every now and again.
“We had a run with him last December for an evaluation day and his lap times and feedback, his consistency was very good for someone who has not got a lot of mileage in a Supercar.
“We’re excited to see what he can do in the enduros. He’s done enough to prove he should be in the main game.”
Jones has made no secret of the fact he wants to move into the Supercars Championship on a full-time basis.
He’s thought to be a contender to replace David Reynolds in the other Team 18 entry next season, should the squad not take up its option on the veteran.
“Who knows what we’ll do? Let’s focus on each event as it comes,” said Burgess of 2026.
“We may have made a decision before the enduros, we may not have. We’re not putting any timeline on it.
“Our job as a homologation team going forward is to make sure we’ve got the best line-up in the cars. That’s short term, medium term and long term.
“Our job is to make sure we’ve got the best drivers. Our other job is to make sure they’ve got the best equipment to showcase their talent.
“I don’t think we’ve given [Dave] the best car yet, so I still believe there’s more to come from him in terms of results when we can give him a better platform.”
Jones steered the #20 Tradie Camaro in the Track to Town run in Townsville while Reynolds was out of action with a virus.
Already in Townsville with his Porsche team running cars in Michelin Sprint Challenge, Jones was put on standby for the weekend but ultimately wasn’t required.
“I never seriously thought that he’d get in the car, but we had to prepare, and I wanted him to mentally prepare that there was a slight chance,” said Burgess.
“If there was then we would have taken advantage of using one of the two co-drivers.”
Reynolds will be partnered in the Endurance Cup by Lee Holdsworth, who will begin his enduro preparations with a GT World Challenge Australia outing this weekend at Sandown.
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