The bonnet which was on Car #34 for Gold Coast-based team Truck Assist Racing’s maiden Supercars Championship victory in Darwin is now a workshop memento.
Jack Le Brocq claimed his second-career victory in Race 15 at Hidden Valley Raceway on a special day for the Yatala-based squad.
It marked Matt Stone Racing’s first race win in Supercars’ main game since joining the championship in 2018.
On the same day, Le Brocq also claimed his first pole position with a lights-to-flag performance.
Car #34’s bonnet from that race, which features Rhonda Sampson’s artwork as part of Indigenous Round, has been taken out of the spare parts inventory and kept one side, given its significance.
The whole MSR family signed the bonnet at the NTI Townsville 500, including Matt Saunders – who filled in as Race Engineer for the Darwin weekend in the absence of Jack Bellotti.
That bonnet, with all of the signatures, has now been placed on show in the workshop as a memento.
It joins a host of other great memories for the Stone family on the same wall, including the bonnet from Jason Bright’s 1998 Bathurst 1000 win with Stone Brothers Racing.
Also on the wall is the bonnet from Bright’s return to SBR in 2009, the bonnet off Shane van Gisbergen’s final race with SBR in 2012, and Todd Hazelwood’s 2017 Dunlop Super2 Series title-winning Truck Dealers bonnet.
The Truck Assist Racing team heads to Sydney Motorsport Park this weekend for Round 7 of the current Supercars Championship where Le Brocq and Cameron Hill will be in action.
QUOTEBOARD:
“You only win your first Supercars race once, so we’ve taken a memento from that, being the bonnet, and added it to the collection we’ve got going on the walls of various memorabilia from various milestones along the way. It’s up in stone now and there to stay as a nice piece of wall art in the workshop. It’s good to recount the experience of that first race win and the thrill of being there in Darwin and everything involved. The biggest thing that comes out of it is it makes us hungry for more and drives us to do it again. We want to keep the collection growing with a couple of spots reserved for the Bathurst win and and first Supercars Championship that, hopefully, aren’t too far away.”
“It’s pretty special to have the first win for MSR in the Supercars Championship and then have all the boys sign the bonnet that actually won the race in Darwin. To get it up on the wall there with all these other bonnets full of history from the SBR days, it’s pretty cool. That day in Darwin was awesome, definitely unreal; I’m still pinching myself even now. It happened five or six weeks ago now and it still feels like it’s still in the present time. Heading into Sydney this weekend it would be awesome to be able to get another one and keep adding to the list. It’s only the start, and I think we’ve got a lot install for the future.”
