Happy 37th birthday to NASCAR in Australia, it was February 28, 1988, when the Stock Cars raced for the first time on the Thunderdome, and people have been in love with the place ever since.

The team at V8 Sleuth are trying to find the winning Neil Bonnett driven car from February 1988, it had the nickname Dagwood, which is from the comic Bumstead, the car was also driven by Rick Wilson.

There are now 7 days to go until the 2025 season starts at Winton Raceway.

It is confirmed that Brendan O’Connor will be debuting his OzTruck at Winton, last year he appeared in the #10 Ford Falcon Ute in the Muscle Division and this year he is in the #10 Chevrolet Silverado that was previously in the hands of Brendon Hourigan, this OzTruck has won in SCA, so Brendan has a great Truck in his hands.

Robert Marchese, Colin Matton, Troy Perichon and Jamey Hollier are the other entrants on the Winton website, this number is believed higher due to the number of garages set aside for SCA.

Four practice sessions are scheduled for any takers on Friday, a fifth is on Saturday.

Qualifying is at 11:35am on the Saturday and Races 1 and 2 are on at 2:01pm and 3:57pm.

Sunday will have Race 3 at 10:41am and 12:12pm and that will be a wrap for the round, this news will be repeated in the Round 1 preview next week.

Visitors will find the teams in garages T21 to T30, all information can be found on the Round 1 page.

Blend Line TV will be streaming all the VMRC rounds this year, but it appears that their subscription service will be the service of choice, it will cost $87 per year.

While Winton is going on, the Adelaide Motorsport Festival will be in full swing with nine cars from the Stock Car family in attendance including the #8 Chevrolet Monte Carlo driven by Richard White.

The #9 Ford Fusion that Marcos Ambrose won his two Cup races with is ready, it was recently at Queensland Raceway getting some laps in and next week the people of Adelaide will be enjoying it, Former Australian NASCAR champion Barry Graham will be driving it after a week of wondering if it was really him.

Barry of course won a championship with John Sidney Racing while helping the American version of NASTRAK get a foothold in the country, NASTRAK USA later became the Richard Petty Driving Experience.

The Eddie Woods #55 AUSCAR is back on track, it was mentioned a couple of years ago that the car was under restoration and now that it is done, it is back to doing what it does best, being on the track.

The #55 is projected to be racing in Stock Cars Australia sometime this year and its arrival is highly anticipated as it is one fine looking Commodore.

It has been a massive three years for SCA AUSCAR, Calder Park 2023 was when things started to get serious, SCA had three cars in action for the first time when it was originally going to be two that weekend and then Winton last year saw six cars on the track for the first time and with the #31 Holden Commodore, the #14 Holden Commodore and the #38 Ford Falcon to come along with the #55, things are really going good for SCA AUSCAR.

Don’t forget drivers that SCA is looking for more Stock Cars and Trucks to join the field and don’t forget about the Muscle Division for those who have a car with grunt but not a category to use it in.

Our search with Eddie Ivermee for the origin of the ex-Ian Thomas, John Faulkner, Eddie Abelnica, Paul Stocker and Doug Moss Oldsmobile continues on, the hatch on the left rear window.

Oldsmobiles from Tri-Star Motorsports, Hagan Racing and RahMoc Enterprises have similar hatches with part-schedule team Moroso Racing using a smaller hatch, but no photo shows any of them having the six points in the layout that Eddie’s car has.

It should be noted that Ian’s car has #14 on it because it was his ARCA number.

We’re still on a mission to figure out the #3 Lumina and people feel really good about the ex-Ron Goodman Oldsmobile as being the car, but we cannot get a straight on photo of the right side of the car so we can compare the 3/4 window, screenshots from the Gold Coast 1992 race are good but the shape of the window is distorted in the video.

That’s it for this edition of ASCN we’ll be back in two weeks as Round 1 preview and race action will take up next week.

See you in two weeks.