Stone happy to help out in hard times
THREE-TIME Supercars championship-winning owner Ross Stone will open the doors to his Yatala-based race team to Victorian Supercars squad Team 18.
To keep the Supercars Championship alive amid the unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic, all Victorian Supercars teams will head into Queensland after the Sydney Motorsport Park event, which starts on Saturday.
Team 18, which fields the Irwin Commodore of Mark
Winterbottom and the Dewalt Commodore of Scott Pye, will set up base for a minimum of two weeks at Stone’s Yatala workshop, preparing for the next event of the championship at Hidden Valley Racing in Darwin.
Stone is best known for his time in the Supercars Championship as a team owner.
Establishing his own Stone Brothers Racing team with his brother Jimmy in 1997, the pair went on to win threeconsecutive championships – two with Marcos Ambrose (2003 and 2004) and one with Russell Ingall (2005).
“(Team 18 owner) Charlie (Schwerkolt) and I often catch up over a coffee, and his Waverley Forklifts Queensland base is only four factories up the road, so it’s just one of those things that happened pretty easily,” Stone said.
“It’s such an uncertain time and Charlie’s crew are going to be away from home for so long and it was just an offer to make their lives a bit better and easier for them. By the time they get here it will be all ready for them, it’s a strange time we are going through and I’ve never seen things change so quickly.
“One minute they had to get out of Melbourne and up to Sydney and soon they need to get out of Sydney and into Queensland, so hopefully everybody can stay healthy and get on with the job and go racing.
“One of the hoists they will be using is where the
Irwin car was actually based on when we prepared it back then, so it’s a bit of a return to old times.”
SBR competed until 2012 before being bought by Betty Klimenko and her Erebus Motorsport team.
Stone now runs his own boutique race team for specialised clients in various racing categories in Australia.
The Supercars hit the track on Saturday for practice, qualifying and a race under lights in Sydney.