How taming his temper shaped Supercars' slow-burn star

Hidden Valley, 2015. Nick Percat limped his LD Motorsport Holden back to the pits, its driver’s side door peeled back like the lid on a tin of sardines. The pile-up he’d been caught up with had actually been triggered by Will Davison getting into the back of Andre Heimgartner, but the last thing Percat had seen was a windscreen full of Jamie Whincup. And he was not happy with the then-six-time Supercars champion.

Before he got back to the lane, Percat pressed the radio button and delivered a now iconic burn levelled at Whincup: “How has that bloke won anything?”

By the time TV pit reporter Greg Murphy arrived at the LDM garage, Percat, still in his driving suit, was helping the small crew pull broken bits off the wrecked car. Murphy made a light-hearted quip about a driver being on the tools and joked that it looked like someone has taken a can opener to the car. But Percat was in no mood for jokes. Instead, he launched into an extraordinary rant on live TV.

“It’s absolute shit for this team,” he fumed. “To race against someone like Jamie Whincup and Will Davison and they pull a move like that on Heimgartner is a joke.

“I’m [working on the car] because I just want to go and punch them right now for the damage they’ve done to my car. We’re a small team punching above our weight, beating Triple Eight and their millions of dollars with their old cars, and... he drives like a tool. I'm over it.”

It’s widely-regarded as of the greatest public ‘Percat blow-ups’, to use a phrase coined by the man himself. But it’s far from an isolated incident. Percat always has been a fierce competitor, wears his heart on his sleeve and is quick to voice his frustrations. His Darwin blow-up made for epic television and, to be perfectly honest, there should be more of it in Supercars. But when the frustrations are off-camera and sometimes directed internally, it’s not conducive to creating the team environment needed for success.

Hidden Valley contact in 2015 prompted famous Percat 'blow up' on TV directed at Whincup

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Luckily for Percat, Brad Jones Racing didn’t put up with it for long. And it changed him as both a driver and a person.

Signing with BJR in 2017 was Percat’s big break. While BJR wasn’t a week-in, week-out race winner, he finally had a shot at a stable, happy home after struggling – surprisingly – to get a foothold in Supercars. But the journey to get there had taken its toll.

Percat’s Supercars career started in the best possible way – a fairytale rookie win at the Bathurst 1000 alongside Garth Tander for the Holden Racing Team in 2011. That was followed by six wins in what is still considered the strongest Super2 field of all time in 2012, with Scott McLaughlin, Scott Pye, Chaz Mostert and Percat all running for main game teams (Stone Brothers Racing, Triple Eight, Ford Performance Racing and Walkinshaw Racing respectively).

The other three ended up in the main game the following season. But Percat, closely aligned to Walkinshaw Racing, got shunted backwards to Carrera Cup. Apart from the enduros, his only Supercars start was when he replaced an injured James Courtney at the Holden Racing Team for the season finale in Sydney.

"I was out there trying to fix the classic Percat blow-ups, which are a lot fewer and far between these days. They were a lot more frequent back then and it wasn't pushing the team in the right direction, so I did a lot of work on myself away from the race track to build myself into the person that I am today" Nick Percat

He got a shot in Supercars in 2014 in a fourth WR car and scored a couple of podiums, but when the team underwent a Racing Entitlements Contract restructure at the end of the season, Percat missed out for 2015. He cut ties with Walkinshaw and signed a lifeline deal with backmarker squad LDM.

The two-year stint at LDM did yield that remarkable Adelaide 500 win but results were few and far between. Meanwhile, McLaughlin and Mostert were regular race winners at Garry Rogers Motorsport and Prodrive respectively, while Pye was driving for Roger Penske. There was a chip on Percat’s shoulder and it showed in moments like his Darwin meltdown. Even when he arrived at BJR ahead of the 2017 season, the chip was still there.

“I was still very green when I came to BJR,” says Percat. “I'd had my stint at Walkinshaw and then at LDM and I had a lot of built up frustration from looking at guys that I had raced in Super2, like Scotty Mac and Scotty Pye and Chaz, who were all in pretty plum seats. I got myself into BJR and I still had a lot to learn.”

Percat admits he still had a lot of underlying frustration when he joined BJR in 2017

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Five years at the Albury-based team later and a lot of learning has been done. Percat credits both former engineer Paul Scalzo and current engineer Andrew Edwards for helping foster huge personal and professional development over the journey. But he says the biggest influence has been team owner Brad Jones, who matter-of-factly shone a light on areas that needed improving.

“I’ve grown a lot and it's a massive credit to Brad and the team,” Percat explains. “My engineer when I arrived at the team, Paul Scalzo, was really good to me. We clashed working together directly, but outside of that he’s been a massive help to me. AE as well, he’s been a huge help. He got the way I worked.

“And Brad... one thing we always had, if he came to me and said he had an issue, I’d go away and personally try and fix or work on myself. That’s one thing I think he has always admired.

“I was out there trying to fix the classic Percat blow-ups, which are a lot fewer and far between these days. They were a lot more frequent back then and it wasn't pushing the team in the right direction, so I did a lot of work on myself away from the race track to build myself into the person that I am today. And I can't thank Brad and the team enough for that.

“If it wasn’t for the way that look after their drivers I probably wouldn’t have transitioned the way I have. I hope that Brad looks back and he can be proud of what he achieved on that side of me as a person.”

Perhaps in that way, Jones was the architect of his own demise. He helped Percat develop a more measured, mature demeanour to go with his rapid pace and it has turned him into one of the category’s best drivers. The sort of driver other teams want to go and sign.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, it looked for all money that Percat was staying put for 2022 and beyond. He’d been mentioned as a potential candidate for Whincup’s seat at Triple Eight, but it turns out he inquired about that back in 2019, even before Whincup announced his impending retirement, and was told that the team would want a younger driver when the time came. Then there was talk about a return to the Walkinshaw fold last year, but nothing came of that.

Percat matured in his time at BJR, but now wants to move on in search of a title-winning opportunity

Photo by: Edge Photographics

In late June this year, BJR announced that Percat had been re-signed on a multi-year deal. Case closed. Until the Walkinshaw rumours started again. And some Tickford rumours began doing the rounds. And despite that BJR contract, there was far too much smoke for there not to be in fire. The split became public earlier this week.

“Brad and I were happy with what we were doing,” says Percat. “[But] I woke up one morning and looked at my girlfriend Bayley and said, ‘I think I’m going to leave BJR’. I couldn't even really explain it to her. It was a weird little trigger that happened somewhere along the line.

“I’ll never forget [that day]; I’d just moved up here to the Gold Coast and I was pacing around my apartment. I rang Brad and had the conversation with him. I said I wasn’t exactly happy anymore.

“I think it was a surprise to both of us, but it was nothing personal against Brad or the team. Something just changed in my head and I wanted to act on it, so I told him. And here we are.”

"Wherever I land, the couple of seats that are around have got some very, very quick blokes driving the cars. That for me is a big positive" Nick Percat

As it stands Percat is technically a free agent for 2022, but it’s widely-expected that a reunion with Walkinshaw is on the cards. It would be a smart move for Percat, given the amount of investment that’s gone into the Walkinshaw Andretti United squad recently. And not just on star driver Mostert, but with big engineering hires such as ex-Triple Eight tech guru Grant McPherson. The team has already won a couple of races this year and will see the impending Gen3 era as a real shot at reclaiming its place among the Supercars powerhouses.

BJR is a good race team and a safe bet. Percat was the undisputed team leader and could have stayed on and probably won a few more races over the next few years. But would he ever have mounted a proper title challenge out of Albury? The realistic answer is probably not. There are no guarantees elsewhere (apart from Triple Eight), but Percat, who just this week turned 33 years old, admits his move is motivated by wanting to have a crack at winning a title.

“I want to put myself into a spot to win the championship, that’s what I grew up wanting to do,” he says. “And yeah, I’m getting older. I look at all the young blokes coming through Super2 and Cup Car and think, ‘I need to do something that’s going to give me a bit more opportunity.' That was a factor.”

Could Percat join Waters (left) at Tickford, or Mostert (centre) at WAU?

Photo by: Edge Photographics

But to win a title, he’s going to have to beat a darn good team-mate. Whether it’s WAU next season, or a much less likely move to Tickford, Percat will face his sternest team-mate test – at least of this stage of his career, when he’s a ‘finished product’ driver. Both Mostert and Tickford’s Cam Waters are in excellent form and have firmly established their team leader status. That’s something Percat is keenly aware of, and says was another motivating factor to make a move.

“That’s one thing that was on my list of reasons [to leave],” he says. “That excites me, to push myself and learn more. I wouldn’t say I’ve plateaued with Brad and the team, but I didn't have anyone to lean on at all times when it came to trying extract more pace out of the car or set-up.

“Wherever I land, the couple of seats that are around have got some very, very quick blokes driving the cars. That for me is a big positive. That’s why I still go over to Perth and do things with [driver coach] BD [Soutar-Dawson], because I believe you can never stop learning. So putting myself up against guys that have been in the top four or five in the championship, and won races, that’s a big positive for me as a driver.

“I’ll get to put myself up against them and see how they go about it. If it all comes to fruition as planned, which I hope it will, I will one day retire from Supercars and say either ‘Yep, I was good enough to be there and race those guys’ or ‘Nope, I wasn't’.”

Nick Percat, Brad Jones Racing Holden

Photo by: Mark Horsburgh, Edge Photographics