Brown keen for Supercars/NASCAR crossover

Will Brown wants to see the stars and cars Supercars and NASCAR share the same track one day.

The reigning Supercars champion returns to Australia to resume his 2025 campaign, following a rollercoaster Cup Series return in Chicago.

Brown, steering a Kaulig Racing-run Chevrolet Camaro, qualified 19th for Monday’s (AEST) race. However, his day came to an end after just three laps after sustaining damage in a multi-car pile-up.

Former Supercars rival turned Cup Series driver Shane van Gisbergen went on to win the race, reinforcing his status as the leading road course racer in the championship.

Supercars drivers have made a splash in recent years in NASCAR, with Brown, van Gisbergen, Brodie Kostecki and Cam Waters all dipping their toes in the Cup Series.

On the flip side, 2021 Cup champion Kyle Larson was set to contest this year’s bp Adelaide Grand Final in a PremiAir Racing-run wildcard, which fell over in recent weeks.

Last year, two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch also withdrew from plans to contest the Adelaide round.

Brown, who is second in the Supercars standings heading to this weekend’s Townsville round, flagged his dream of a crossover weekend between the two categories.

"It’s cool that we are crossing over. It’d be great to have someone from NASCAR come down and race in our category,” said Brown, who last year quipped that NASCAR drivers in a Supercar would be "awesome."

"And it’d be awesome to run the two categories on one weekend and see what the racing’s like compared to each other on the same track and all that sort of stuff.”

The current NextGen NASCAR Cup car shares many characteristics with Supercars machinery, which Brown explained in a video posted to his social media.

Brown suggested Cup stars would be able to translate certain skills to Supercars, and cited how beneficial simulator work was to preparing for his own NASCAR plans.

“I think there’s always things that are that are going to correlate over from the NASCAR Cup car,” Brown said.

"They’re a very similar car of what we have. The simulator has been amazing. I’ve got a lot more time on it over here than I thought I would. I thought we were going to get about one to one-and-a-half hours, and I think we probably had ten or more hours on it.”

Brown will return to Australia ahead of this weekend's seventh round of 2025, the NTI Townsville 500, on July 11-13. Supercars drivers will contest races on all three days of the event. Tickets for the NTI Townsville 500 are on sale now. International viewers can watch the action on SuperView.