Supercars graduate eyes NASCAR title
Former Supercars engineer James Small is in the box seat to win the NASCAR Cup Series regular title after helping Martin Truex Jr. to his third win of the season.
Supercars has been put up in lights in NASCAR circles of late, thanks to Shane van Gisbergen’s victory in Chicago earlier this month.
It was announced Tuesday that Erebus Motorsport driver Brodie Kostecki will race a third Richard Childress Racing entry at Indianapolis.
Small, who led Mark Winterbottom to Bathurst victory in 2013 with Ford Performance Racing, is another Supercars name making it big Stateside.
In May, former Stone Brothers Racing and Erebus engineer Luke Mason helped Josef Newgarden win the Indianapolis 500 for Team Penske.
Small has been Truex Jr.’s crew chief on the #19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota since 2020.
🦞🏆 so proud of everyone! Finally we broke the curse! @JoeGibbsRacing @ToyotaRacing @MartinTruex_Jr pic.twitter.com/yvH3OYzjdV
— James Small (@james_small) July 17, 2023
After a winless 2022, Truex Jr. has emerged as a serious title contender in 2023, with Small set for a championship bid in the playoffs.
Truex Jr. snatched the Regular Season Championship points lead on Tuesday (AEST) with victory at New Hampshire.
It was third time in 2023 that Small had led Truex Jr. to victory — after wins at Dover and Sonoma — and the Aussie’s eighth in the Cup Series.
With six regular season races left, Truex Jr. leads Hendrick Motorsport’s William Byron by 17 points.
A Gibbs driver last won a Cup Series title in 2019 via Kyle Busch, who will race alongside Kostecki at RCR at Indianapolis next month.
“We were talking about, this is the one,” Small said on NASCAR’s official website.
“It’s important. We put the same effort in every week, but we just know that we come here and we really expect to win, and thankfully we crossed it off the list today.
“It’s very up and down. Obviously, we’re showing strong pace across a variety of tracks, and it’s just about executing it.
“You can do that all day and have things out of your control go wrong and take you out of it. Take every race one at a time, each week at a time, and try to maximise it.
"We’ll see if we wind up there and if we can do it, but I feel really good about it right now.”
The 2023 Cup Series will continue with the HighPoint.com 400 at Pocono this weekend.
The 2023 Repco Supercars Championship will resume at the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight on July 28-30. Tickets are on sale now.
