Supercars Champion Will Brown will get behind the wheel of a single-seater for three rounds of the NextGen New Zealand Summer Series Presented by Repco in early 2025.
Brown will debut in the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship in a Red Bull-backed Toyota FT60 at the SIXT Rent a Car Historic GP at Taupo International Motorsport Park on January 10-12 before returning a week later for the Alliance Services Hampton Downs International.
The Red Bull Ampol Racing Supercars star will return for Round 6 of the NextGen New Zealand Championship at Highlands on February 7-9 to compete in the 69th New Zealand Grand Prix.
NextGen, CTFROC, and Red Bull have worked behind the scenes to make the deal happen, knowing Brown was up for the challenge of fulfilling a long-held desire to compete in the series.
“Single seaters are a bit of an itch I want to scratch, and there’s no better place to do it than in this championship,” he said. “I was watching Formula 2 and Formula 3 races earlier this year and thought it would be great to race in a competitive field of single-seaters once again.”
Brown wanted to compete in the championship as far back as 2017 but couldn’t quite pull the right deal together. That all changed this year.
“When Tony’s [Quinn’s] organisation took over the promotion of the major New Zealand championships, the desire to have another go started to look like a much more realistic possibility. I’m delighted to be part of those three weekends and am looking forward to some excellent racing.
“I’m not coming to take part; I’m coming to New Zealand to win. It’s no different to why I have wanted to try NASCAR and TCR. As a racing driver, I want to test myself against the best, and I know this championship has a fantastic record of helping produce some world-class drivers.”
NextGen New Zealand Championship CEO Josie Spillane recognises the significance of the Supercars champion’s visit across the Tasman.
“Will has been a fantastic supporter of our group, coming out earlier this year to be our guest of honour at our member’s Gala Day at Highlands,” she said.
“We got talking, and as it happens in the world of motorsport, one thing leads to another, and here we are welcoming the current Supercars Champion and Toowoomba’s’ leading car salesman to New Zealand to compete in three rounds of the NextGen Championship.
“I’m sure race fans are going to be really excited to come out in force to watch Will in action and have the chance to meet him! A very special thank you to Red Bull and the team at Toyota for the massive part they have played in this exciting collaboration, too!”
A full field of 20 cars is expected for the 2025 championship, the first time since the pre-Covid 2020 season. That year, the championship included no fewer than three current Formula 1 drivers, including Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda, and Franco Colapinto.
Graduates and title winners also include Lando Norris and Lance Stroll, as well as Thomas Randle and Matt Payne from Supercars.
Brown will join Giles Motorsport for his three big weekends – one of the four teams that compete during the championship’s five weekends.
He’ll be in the good hands of Team Principal Stephen Giles, who was chief engineer to Mika Häkkinen in his two Formula 1 world championship-winning seasons of 1998 and 1999.
All three appearances will be at Triple Eight Race Engineering shareholder Tony Quinn’s New Zealand tracks.
Like the vast majority of top single-seater racers around the world, Brown followed the ‘classic’ route in motorsport, competing in karts from the age of 13 before switching to circuit racing and winning the Australian Formula Ford Championship and the Formula 4 Championship in 2016.
He won the Australian Toyota 86 Championship the same year, and that proved to be a turning point as he headed down the tin-top route on a trajectory to Supercars. But despite his phenomenal success in Australia’s main game, he’s never lost the appetite for driving fast open-wheeled racing cars.
His last appearance in a single-seater was in the Australian S5000 series in 2019, where he took on the likes of Rubens Barrichello.
Although a comparison to Shane van Gisbergen’s famous win as the reigning Supercars champion in a Red Bull-backed car in the 2021 New Zealand Grand Prix will be inevitable, Brown says his surprise inclusion in the championship is more about exploring his own abilities as a racing driver.
“Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some testing in a single seater at some stage, but I know Taupo well from Supercars. I’ve done some laps at Hampton Downs in a Toyota 86, and I’ve done a few laps at Highlands as well, so the tracks will not be new to me.”
Header Image: Mark Horsburgh/ Red Bull Content Pool
