Eggleston Motorsport confirms Bates deal

Eggleston Motorsport has confirmed the prized signing of new Super2 champion Zach Bates for the 2025 season.

Eggleston, the winners of the 2024 Super2 teams' title, has signed drivers' champion Bates, who is leaving Walkinshaw Andretti United.

Bates was recently locked in to take up a main game wildcard opportunity at Triple Eight Race Engineering for the 2025 enduros alongside Craig Lowndes.

The 20-year-old is set to run the champion's #1 in 2025, following main game graduate Kai Allen, who won the 2023 title with the Eggleston squad.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how making the switch goes, but I am confident we will get up to speed pretty quickly," Bates said.

“It’s one of those things where three races for the year just isn’t enough for the main series and because it is so competitive, you have just got to try to be sharp. So I’m very, very excited.

“We’ll be going to a few different tracks as well next year which will be good, so that all helps.

“It’s a long year. I think the way the season played out this year, you can’t really make too many assumptions, but that is always the aim."

Supercars champion Will Brown was integral to the move, with Eggleston Motorsport enjoying a long partnership with Triple Eight.

“He had been in the frame for the Supercheap drive for a little while and Will is pretty integral in his career as well,” team owner Rachael Eggleston said.

“Will is obviously still a great friend of ours and I think keeping the whole thing within the family has been a big part of it also given our association with Triple Eight which has been strong for many years now.

“We run Triple Eight cars, we get Triple Eight technical support, and it worked well for him doing the enduros with them and then still needing to do some racing in Super2.

“I think he will work really well in our environment. We’re really looking forward to it.”

Bates joins Super3 champion Cody Burcher and Toyota 86 graduate Bradi Owen in a new-look Eggleston line-up, with Jordyn Sinni to return for a third year with the team.

“Our business model works on having an internal succession plan,” Eggleston added.

“So this year we had Kai and Cooper [Murray] as our more experienced drivers and this allows our other drivers to learn as much as they can from them.

“Then as we help the guys to graduate to the main series, we hope by that stage the others have grown to a point where they can become the leaders of the team.

“And that’s a role that we see Zach being able to slot into as well. He’s at the stage of his career where I’d like to think he’ll be in main series in ’26, and I’m sure that would be his intention, so we see him as being a great part of the internal succession plan.

“We’ll have a few new young new drivers coming in that he can play a role in mentoring and helping them in their rookie year."

Bates will make his Eggleston debut at the Sydney season opener in February next year. Tickets are on sale now.