Round 3 of the 2026 Australian Stock Car Championship season was held at Winton Motor Raceway.

The road to Winton was a bit of a bumpy one, issues between AASA and the Benalla Auto Club shifted the organization of the event, usually the VMRC is under the sanctioning of AASA, but they had to change it to Motorsport Australia and that resulted in some scrambling being done to get the show on the road.

It is always a great round when somebody new joins in the action and in this round, we had two new additions.

Duncan Brown’s entry to the category came after purchasing the ex-Tony Howlett Ford XF Falcon from Brad Hall, unlike most cars that are offered for sale, this one did not require a long period of rebuilding.

Duncan got valuable experience by cutting laps at Calder Park with Troy Perichon and then appeared at the 2026 Winton Festival of Speed with the SCA AUSCAR field and friends.

Eddie Ivermee’s journey to this weekend started when he saw Richard White’s Chevrolet Lumina on the Thunderdome followed by an advertisement for a chassis that was once home to a Buick and a Pontiac and then he saw an ad for an Oldsmobile Cutlass and in less than two years, that car was ready.

Joining Duncan and Eddie at the track was championship leader Daniel Stubbs, Richard White, Robert Marchese, Mick Heppleston, Sam Gibson, Richard Hodgson, Jamey Hollier, Troy Perichon and Brad Lighton.

Joining us for this round as he has done all season long was Brad Burgess, the always popular car builder, car fixer and car owner, Brad provides us with all the trackside news and information and adds colour to these reports.

Qualifying

Richard White posted the first time in qualifying, a 2:04.0783 before Brad Lighton taken over top spot with a time of 2:00.3415 and held the spot for the first four minutes with everybody posting a time.

Richard White reclaimed the spot with a time of 1:41.2973 and Robert Marchese moved up to third with a time of 1:45.3654 and Mick Heppleston moved up to fourth with a time of 1:47.1494.

Sam Gibson moved up to fifth with a time of 1:48.6377 but he was quickly bumped down the order by Jamey Hollier, Robert Marchese and Troy Perichon.

Daniel Stubbs moved into Pole Position with a time of 1:29.2447 and there was still 10 minutes left in the session.

Robert Marchese moved up to third with a time of 1:37.3195 and Brad Lighton was holding fourth, Robert would further improve his time to 1:35.3810.

Richard White went to the pits for a minute and fifty seconds and whatever the RWR crew had done, it paid dividends as Richard moved back up to top spot with a minute and thirty-five seconds to spare.

Richard would hold on to the pole and would lead the field to the green in Race 1, Daniel Stubbs would start from second, Robert Marchese in third.

Brad Lighton started from fourth, Mick Heppleston started from fifth, starting sixth was Jamey Hollier, starting seventh was Sam Gibson, starting eighth was Troy Perichon, starting ninth was Richard Hodgson, starting tenth in his debut race was Eddie Ivermee and rounding out the field was fellow newcomer Duncan Brown in eleventh.

Race 1

Richard White got a great start and was clear of the #19 Chevrolet Monte Carlo by 1.21 seconds after the first lap.

The field stayed steady until Troy Perichon dropped down the order and Eddie Ivermee passed Richard Hodgson to move up to eighth position.

Troy Perichon’s race soon came to an end and so the #6 Ford XF Falcon was the first retirement of the race.

Eddie Ivermee’s #23 Oldsmobile picked up mechanical issues and the car out of the race after six laps.

Richard White by lap 8 extended his lead to 5.28 seconds and Daniel Stubbs was holding second by just over 5 seconds.

Robert Marchese was comfortable in third position with the gap to Mick Heppleston being 55 seconds.

Mick held fourth position by ten seconds ahead of Jamey Hollier who was leading the SCA AUSCAR field.

Brad Lighton and Jamey Hollier were battling for fifth position and were doing so for two-thirds of the race before a gearbox issue forced Brad’s #26 Holden Commodore into retirement.

Richard White taken his first win of the season by 4.35 seconds ahead of Daniel Stubbs, the win was also the first in the category by a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.

Robert Marchese finished in third followed by Mick Heppleston, Jamey Hollier, Sam Gibson, Richard Hodgson and Duncan Brown.

The garages were a hive of activity as several cars and trucks needed urgent attention and any repairs had to be done in just under two hours.

Eddie Ivermee had a clutch issue and so he and his team got to work on rectifying the problem, one of the great things about motorsport is that if you ever need assistance, volunteers are never far away.

Although he finished fourth in Race 1, Mick Heppleston had a mechanical issue that required attention and thankfully that problem was sorted, and Mick was back in action.

Unfortunately, Brad Lighton’s #26 Holden Commodore was out of action for the weekend with the gearbox issue.

Race 2

Richard White got off to a good start with Daniel Stubbs behind him followed closely by Robert Marchese.

Troy Perichon soon moved up to eighth place after passing Eddie Ivermee.

Mick Heppleston went off the track on Lap 4 and had dropped from fourth to eighth position by the time he was rolling again.

Richard White’s lead over Daniel Stubbs was 3.310 seconds on Lap 6.

Mick Heppleston moved up to sixth after passing the Nissan Gazelle driven by Richard Hodgson and set his sights on Sam Gibson whose Excel was five seconds up to the track.

It didn’t take long for Mick to catch up to Sam, and he passed him as they were clocking their seventh lap of the race, right behind them was Richard White and Daniel Stubbs.

Daniel Stubbs narrowed the gap to 2.8 seconds and continued to cut down the margin as the leaders approached Sam and Mick.

After squeezing past the Excel, the #19 Chevrolet Monte Carlo started to get alongside the #3 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 but the #3 had enough speed in it to see off the challenge and make it two wins from two races.

Robert Marchese collected his second third place finish for the weekend, the #84 OzTruck was the third and last vehicle to finish on the lead lap.

What was missed on the broadcast was that Jamey Hollier finished fourth ahead of a fast-closing Mick Heppleston who ended up just .5735 of a second behind the #71 Ford Falcon, Jamey’s retention of fourth place was helped by recording his fastest lap, a 1:40.5541 on the last lap.

Sixth place was Sam Gibson, Richard Hodgson was seventh, eighth was Troy Perichon, finishing his first race in ninth was Eddie Ivermee and Duncan Brown rounded out the field in tenth position.

Sunday

A special guest arrived on Sunday and that was Jason Mcvean and he brought along his #19 Holden VL Commodore still with its Autopro banner on the windscreen which puts the car as being from the 1998/99 season.

The sight of another car and its owner always brings a cheer and hopefully Jason left Winton with the desire to join the action in the future, he would have no trouble finding support.

Meanwhile it was discovered that the #19 Chevrolet Monte Carlo had a leaking power steering reservoir and that ended up getting fluid onto the alternator and it caused a misfire, the team replaced the battery with a new ACDelco battery, and the car was ready for Sunday’s action.

It was a shorter day for the field as the Winton 300 taken up the majority of the afternoon and so the racing action was all done by 12:30pm.

Race 3

Richard White led the field to the green flag, and the early mover was Mick Heppleston who moved into fourth position relegating Jamey Hollier to fifth.

Daniel Stubbs was looking for ways to get past the #3 Camaro while Robert Marchese sat right behind them, the #84 Chevrolet Silverado was clearly the third best runner of the weekend.

Eddie Ivermee’s weekend came to a sudden end, it had just passed Richard Hodgson’s Nissan Gazelle when smoke poured from the car and Eddie parked it on the grass for the tow back to the garage.

The race restarted after a short caution period and once again the Camaro was off to a good start, The #19 Chevrolet Monte Carlo was sticking to the Camaro but fell back when the #19 briefly went off the circuit.

While the battle for the lead was happening, there was a battle in the Invited class with Sam Gibson and Richard Hodgson trading positions

Daniel Stubbs finally got past the #3 Chevrolet Camaro going into the last corner and the lead was his going into the last lap.

Robert Marchese finished in third, Mick Heppleston stayed ahead of Jamey Hollier for fourth, sixth place was settled on the main straight with Richard Hodgson taking the spot from Sam Gibson and Troy Perichon was right behind them in eighth.

Rounding out the field was Duncan Brown, the #02 Ford XF Falcon was enjoying a good weekend by finishing all three races at this time.

Race 4

The field was down to nine for the last race of the weekend with Eddie Ivermee’s Oldsmobile out with an engine failure.

The field was quickly down to eight as Mick Heppleston retired the #304 Chevrolet Silverado from the race.

All the excitement was at the front of the field as Daniel Stubbs and Richard White battled for the lead.

The margin between first and second was just 1.192 seconds halfway through the race.

Robert Marchese had third place all to himself and behind him was Jamey Hollier in the lead SCA AUSCAR followed by Richard Hodgson and his Nissan Gazelle.

Sam Gibson was battling Troy Perichon for sixth position and went too wide putting the #172 Hyundai Excel onto the grass and Sam endured a long excursion off the track before getting back on the track.

Richard White got the lead on Lap 6, but Daniel Stubbs powered back past him just moments later.

Despite Richard’s best efforts, he was unable to pass Daniel and the driver of the #19 Chevrolet Monte Carlo won by 1.08 seconds, his ninth win of the season.

Robert Marchese recorded another third place to sweep the position for the weekend, Jamey Hollier was fourth, Richard Hodgson was fifth, Troy Perichon was sixth, seventh went to Sam Gibson and rounding out the field was Duncan Brown who had a 100% finishing rate for his debut round.

Wrap Up

If the weekend had names Saturday could be called ‘Revenge of the Camaro’ and Sunday could be called ‘The #19 Strikes Back’.

Everybody done a wonderful job in getting the show on the road after all the uncertainty of what was going to happen to the weekend.

The weather was perfect for racing and that actually is a rarity as the weather likes to mess about with us round after round.

The team at Stock Cars Australia is at work putting together a plan for the final round of the season, as many of you know the final round was set for Calder Park Raceway on November 14-15 but now that the AASA Race Series (formerly Hi-tec Oils Super Series) has been cancelled so too has that date so a new plan has to be made for somewhere at some time but rest assured they’ll get the job done.

Thank you for joining us for this recap and we hope that we get to see you all soon.