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Meet Supercars’ new batch of rookies

19 Feb 2020
Young guns out to prove themselves
3 mins by James Pavey
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Meet the new faces on the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship grid in 2020.

In Adelaide there will be three drivers starting their first main game season: Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Bryce Fullwood, Brad Jones Racing’s Jack Smith and Matt Stone Racing’s Zane Goddard.

A fourth will follow suit at Albert Park next month in the form of Jake Kostecki, who is sharing the #34 MSR Holden with Goddard as part of the SuperLite initiative.

While the quartet – all aged 20 or 21 – are fresh names to Supercars fans, they certainly are no strangers to one another.

“I have raced all these guys since I was young in go-karts and we’ve sort of come through the same sort of pathway,” Fullwood told Supercars.com.

Trackside: Supercars' class of 2020

“I’ve raced all these guys since I was 10 years old so it’s quite funny that we’re all coming through at the same time but look, it’s really good. Really excited for the year and it should be good fun.”

The first of the bunch Fullwood raced against was his Dunlop Super2 Series teammate from last year, Goddard.

The Gold Coaster tried his hand at the European open-wheel path, impressing in the 2016 British F4 Championship and stepping up to the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup before homing in on the Supercars dream.

All it took was two seasons in the second-tier, with Goddard bursting out of the blocks in 2019 including two ARMOR ALL Pole Positions at Perth.

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His SuperLite teammate Kostecki has taken the more traditional route from Super3 to Super2 and last year got a taste of the top level in three PIRTEK Enduro Cup wildcard outings.

Smith has won a championship in each of the Australian and New Zealand V8 Touring Cars series and gathered Supercars experience last year through four solo wildcards and a MSR co-drive.

And then there’s Fullwood, last year’s Super2 champion, who got his first laps aboard the Mobil 1 Middy’s Racing Commodore on Tuesday in the Tailem Bend pre-season test.

It gave him a day’s worth of mileage to prepare to join the likes of Supercars champions Mark Skaife and Garth Tander in driving Walkinshaw’s famous #2 entry.

“At the moment my mind is sort of spinning a bit, it’s absolutely awesome,” Fullwood said.

“I’m standing on the main straight at Adelaide; now I just saw my name up on the garage.

“You don’t realise all of the small things like that, just walking into the track it’s such a big set-up and all of that and all of the guys there that are working purely just for you and your car. It’s very cool.”

The Superloop Adelaide 500 is renowned for issuing reality checks, though. Just last year it was the site of a brutal initiation for Macauley Jones.

The new rookie class will get their first chance to acquit themselves at the parklands street circuit in opening practice today from 3:55pm.

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