MSR joined fellow Supercars squads Triple Eight Race Engineering and PremiAir Racing at the venue just over a week out from the category’s first QR event in six years.
Triple Eight ran a wildcard test for Zach Bates ahead of his Ipswich debut, with the full Red Bull Ampol brains trust and lead drivers in attendance to maximise learnings ahead of the event.
MSR wanted to test Crick in his wildcard Camaro too but was unable to do so due to the nature of his four-event program.
Wildcard rules allow two tests per year – one for sprint rounds and one for the endurance events, with the latter required to be run as part of the full-field test on August 12.
There is no additional test day ahead of a second sprint wildcard, which Crick is lining up for following an appearance at the Sydney season-opener in February.
“We would have liked to have tested Cricky’s car out there but unfortunately the rules didn’t permit it,” Stone confirmed to Speedcafe.
“It would have been nice to give him a test in his own car before racing there but we’ve got faith in him, he’s done plenty of ride days and test days with us at QR over the last couple of years.”
The Falcon driven by Crick was one of two Car of the Future prototypes built by Supercars ahead of that ruleset’s introduction in 2013.
It was built as an FG and upgraded to FG X specifications by the category before eventually being sold in 2022 to stunt king Robbie Bolger.
“[The Falcon runs] a completely different tyre to what we’re racing on, but it’s still a Supercar – you’ve still got a big V8 and a spool in the back, so that was worthwhile,” said Stone.
Crick shared that car with Super2 driver Bradi Owen, while the team also ran a Project Blueprint-era FG for Crick’s enduro co-driver Aaron Seton and Anderson Super2 driver Ayrton Hodson.
Stone said the main purpose of the day was to run the two Falcons following recent rebuilds.
“We wanted to give both cars some laps,” he said.
“We basically brought Seton and Cricky along to do that and then we opened the offer out to a couple of young kids to come and have a skid.
“It doesn’t hurt for those guys to get some mileage and for us it was quite good to get back to our roots a little bit too.
“When we were testing our Super2 cars we always used to try and give the opportunity for kids in lower categories to do a few laps and work with our engineering team.
“It was quite cool to do something like that where we had a couple of Super2 kids having a steer with our engineers guiding them a little bit.”
Bolger, who also owns the Holden COTF prototype, turned laps in the FG X too.
“He said it was 10 or 15 years since he’d been behind the wheel of a Supercar,” noted Stone of Bolger.
“It was a bit of a flashback for him, which was pretty cool.”
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