Repco Supercars Championship leader Will Brown and Ford contender Cameron Waters will make their NASCAR Cup Series debuts this weekend at Sonoma Raceway to continue the Antipodean invasion.
Brown will race for the legendary Richard Childress Racing and has no experience when it comes to NASCAR after completing a late deal to run at Sonoma. But he will have Shane van Gisbergen on his side as spotter at the event after the New Zealander took victory at Portland last weekend.
As for Waters, he has contested two NASCAR Truck Series races as he joins RFK Racing for his maiden NASCAR Cup Series appearance.
“Obviously I have done two Truck races which has been a massive experience and a massive eye-opener,” said Waters.
“I was super pumped and then when I heard Will was doing it, I was just a little bit more excited again.
“It will be great to do Sonoma which is a road course and in a car that’s more similar to what we race over here.
“They race pretty wild over there so hopefully we look after each other!”
The journey for Brown has been a whirlwind as he prepares to complete a busy three week period after a race winning performance in Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS at The Bend before Sonoma, then Darwin the week after for Supercars.
“Mine has probably been on the cards for four weeks, it came about pretty quickly with Richard Childress,” Brown said.
“I did a race there with them last year at COTA and I guess I had a pretty good start to the year here with Supercars and thought I could probably reach out again and see if there was any opportunities over there.
“I was able to get a deal done which was awesome, to race over there will be great. Hopefully I can get more experiences and more knowledge and bring it back here as well — it’s pretty cool to do a NASCAR race.
“I started talking to Cam and he said he’s doing it as well and I thought ‘that will be pretty cool’. Hopefully we can have a good race over there and have a good time.”
The Toyota Save Mart 350 will begin at 5:30am AEST on Monday morning.