It's official: Stoner's V8 drive

The rumour mill concerning Casey Stoner’s V8 Supercar ambitions has been running in overdrive in recent months, but now the speculation is over – the recently retired two-time world MotoGP champion has inked a deal to drive in the 2013 Dunlop V8 Series, the development category for talent eyeing the ‘main game’ V8 Supercar Championship.

Stoner has signed on with Roland Dane’s Triple Eight Race Engineering to campaign a Red Bull Pirtek Commodore. The car and its livery is set to be revealed on February 27, just a couple of days before Stoner’s debut in Adelaide for the first of a seven-round series.

Stoner, who claimed the MotoGP title in 2007 and 2011, said he was very much looking forward to this next chapter of his racing career, and was pleased to have the backing of sponsors Red Bull and Pirtek.

“Red Bull has been a long-time supporter of mine and it’s great it will be a part of this next phase of my career, in partnership with Pirtek,” he said.

“I’m not promising we can deliver what Marcos (Ambrose – who claimed back-to-back V8 Supercar Championships in a Pirtek-sponsored car in 2003 and 2004) did before heading off to NASCAR, but we will be trying to learn and develop as quickly as we can and see what that brings.”

Dane said he was looking forward to monitoring Stoner’s progress. “Casey is the ultimate professional and I think everyone involved is looking forward to being a part of his transition from two wheels to four,” he said.

Stoner, who turned his back on a multi-million-dollar MotoGP contract and who says he’s dreamed of driving a V8 Supercar ever since he was a teenager, has made a one-year commitment to the Dunlop V8 Series to ‘test the waters’ of V8 competition, before making any longer-term plans.

Stoner completed his first test session with Triple Eight Engineering in 2011, and with his retirement from MotoGP at the end of 2012, his long association with Red Bull, and Pirtek’s return to V8 Supercars after an absence of some years, all the various pieces for a full-time V8 drive recently fell into place for the 27-year-old.