From minnows to 1-2s: How Matt Stone plans to defend 2025 stunner

Friday, March 14, 2025.

Broc Feeney led the field to the grid for what was his second pole in succession, which would become a clean sweep of all four poles for the weekend on his way to record-breaking 19 poles in a single season.

Just a day prior, Feeney had claimed his first win of the season from pole. However, he shared the headlines with Cameron Hill, who claimed his first career podium with a fine run to third.

Driving for Matt Stone Racing, Hill would start alongside Feeney on the front row, and had his MSR teammate Nick Percat starting right behind in third.

Percat was himself coming off the back of a race win 12 months prior at the Grand Prix, in what marked a career turnaround after a disastrous stint at what was then known as Walkinshaw Andretti United.

However, Feeney would pose a major hurdle to overcome at the head of the field. Within the space of a minute, the fairytale had begun to be written...

Little more than seven years after entering the main game, and MSR found both of their Camaros leading the field on the world stage at Melbourne.

After beating Feeney off the line, Hill was able to park him up wide at Turn 3, and allowed Percat through into a 1-2 that they would hold on to through to the chequered flag.

The scenes at the podium were jubilant, and in the middle of it all was eponymous team owner Matt Stone, who had achieved the ultimate giant-killing performance.

The son of Supercars Hall of Famer and former Stone Brothers Racing co-owner Jimmy Stone had finally emulated what his father and uncle Ross had achieved in the heyday of SBR in the mid-2000s.

"Getting that result last year was just a big justification of all of the hard work the whole team has put in over the last 10 years to get here," Stone reflected to Supercars.com in Melbourne.

"Our goal every year is to go one better than the year before, and just keep incrementally getting better and better, and closer to being the dominant team in this category.

"I think last year with that 1-2 result, a sweep of podiums, and even podiums across three different circuits in the first quarter of the year, it was starting to really all come together."

Early signs of Gen3 promise

However, the signs were there well before Hill and Percat led the field home. In fact, they were there even before Percat claimed his drought-breaking win in 2024.

Back in 2023, Jack Le Brocq and MSR impressed as the Gen3 era provided a complete reset for the field, following the technical arms race that was the Gen2 era.

Introducing a platform that essentially put the entire field on an even playing field provided smaller teams like MSR with a chance to take it to the big dogs such as Triple Eight and Dick Johnson Racing.

Although his weekend was soured by a heavy crash in the second race, results of eighth, sixth, and fifth in the remaining three races were proof that MSR and Le Brocq were a potent combination.

Indeed, Stone himself admitted that he didn't have an inkling that Percat would go on to claim his win in 2024, but that in turn led to the belief in what turned out to be a very special day last year.

"I think in 2023 there was so much new that it was hard to really gauge, I put that down to us hitting the ground running with the Gen3 platform," Stone said.

"We were pretty full-on in our pre-season testing in 2023 and we hit the ground running. Obviously looking back now this track certainly seems to shine out as a strong one for us.

"Coming into year two we probably weren't even thinking that much about it, but last year proved that it was no fluke."

Le Brocq would go on to win MSR's first race in the main game later that year in Darwin.

"There's definitely pressure there..."

Having won three races in as many years, and two races in as many years at Albert Park, all eyes are certainly on the privateer Queensland squad ahead of this weekend's Melbourne SuperSprint.

Both Hill and Percat moved on at season's end, with Le Brocq returning and 2024 Super2 champion Zach Bates completing the yin and yang of youth and experience.

However, the opening round of the year at the DUNLOP Sydney 500 showed highly encouraging signs, with Bates securing three top eight qualifying berths, and Le Brocq snaring two top 10 race finishes to leave the weekend seventh in points.

Stone admitted that it is rounds such as Sydney that are the rounds he puts the most pressure on, given poor performances in recent years, yet he also admitted that the recent form guide places more pressure on this weekend from sources outside the team.

"There's definitely pressure there externally, and we put a higher expectation on ourselves," Stone said.

"For me, the pressure is higher at circuits like Sydney Motorsport Park and Taupō, because they're circuits where we've had spectacularly bad results. There's the pressure to try and turn that around.

"I was quite pleased that we came out of Sydney Motorsport Park, albeit not a flawless weekend, but far better results than last year and some really good promise.

"This weekend, we're not expecting to go out there and clean sweep by no means, this category is far too difficult for that, but we'll just go out there and execute, and try and hopefully be up the front."

The winning mentality

Naturally, there has been plenty of conversation surrounding whether or not MSR can make it three in a row at the Grand Prix this weekend.

However, from within, it's not just an expectation at one round only. It's the mindset they will carry into all 14 events of the 2026 season.

"I think mindset is a big part. We always go to the racetrack with the expectation and the intention of winning," Stone said.

"We've now for three years had a race-winning driver on the podium, we've had multiple podiums.

"There's a couple of tracks that we favour, but now rather than going there pushing to try and win, we go there knowing that we're capable of it, and that we just need to execute the way we can and get those results again."

So, with MSR having a strong start to the year in Sydney, and now heading to their most favoured venue on the calendar, are they the ones to catch?

Stone stopped short of saying they're the ones everyone is chasing, but made a point to say that the performances had turned heads up and down the lane.

"Not so much a target, I think people certainly look at us to try and discover the secret sauce that we have at this circuit," Stone said.

"I don't think there's anything too secret about it, I think it's just an understanding about how this type of grip circuit works, in the same way we struggle with the Sydney Motorsport Park's and Taupō low-level grip circuits.

"Definitely, it's good to have people looking and trying to see what you're doing, because it means you're doing something right."