Why new Supercars champion Brown is making a single-seater return

Reigning Supercars champion Will Brown has defined his forthcoming return to single-seater racing is to check himself “towards the very best” drivers who aspire for future careers in System 1.

Brown, who clinched a dramatic maiden Supercars title in 2024, will enter three rounds within the 2025 System Regional Oceania Championship – competing within the opening two races and season finale throughout January and February.

The System Regional collection – which has quite a few regional branches the world over – is understood for being a testing floor for future F1 skills, with Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda and Franco Colapinto all contesting the Oceania championship in 2020.

In 2025 it’s going to have a 20-car area which is its most since COVID-19 and Brown sees it as a chance to check his means throughout completely different racing disciplines.

“Single-seaters are a little bit of an itch I need to scratch and there’s no higher place to do it than on this championship,” stated Brown, who received the Supercars championship with an unimaginable comeback drive from final at November’s Adelaide finale.

“I used to be watching System 2 and System 3 races earlier this yr and thought it could be nice to race in a aggressive area of single-seaters as soon as once more.

“I’m not coming to participate, I’m coming to New Zealand to win. It’s no completely different to why I’ve wished to strive NASCAR and TCR.

“As a racing driver, I need to check myself towards the very best and I do know this championship has a improbable report of serving to produce some world-class drivers.”

The 26-year-old, who additionally contested one spherical within the 2024 NASCAR Cup season, will race for four-time collection champion Giles Motorsport aboard a Toyota FT-60, six years after Brown’s final single-seater look.

That was in S5000, the place he drove the total 2019 season which included a podium at The Bend Motorsport Park, three years after he received the Australian System 4 Championship.

Brown has had a long-standing curiosity in contesting System Regional, however the alternative lastly arrived this yr when Tony Quinn took over the promotion of the New Zealand tracks he might be racing – Taupo Worldwide Motorsport Park and Highlands Motorsport Park.

“The will to have one other go began to seem like a way more reasonable chance,” stated Brown of the person who’s a shareholder within the Supercars staff he races for, Triple Eight Race Engineering.

“I’m delighted to be a part of these three weekends and am trying ahead to some glorious racing.”

This is not going to be the primary time a reigning Supercars champion has raced single-seaters, as three-time collection winner Shane van Gisbergen took a powerful victory on the 2021 New Zealand Grand Prix.

So Brown is set to emulate the Supercars legend as he hopes “to get some testing in a single-seater at some stage”.

“However I do know Taupo nicely from Supercars,” he added. “I’ve finished some laps at Hampton Downs in a Toyota 86 and I’ve finished just a few laps at Highlands as nicely, so the tracks is not going to be new to me.”