A 10-year-old Adelaide girl will this weekend live the dream of many a young motorsport fan when she watches a car race around the track in a livery she drew.
Grace Lewis pipped professional designers from across the country to have her drawing reproduced on Macauley Jones' No.96 BJR Chevrolet Camaro at this weekend's Supercars' season-ending Adelaide 500.
Grace spent about 15 hours perfecting the drawing, and even managed to squeeze in some time at school.
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Introduced to the sport through her mum, who's volunteered as a medic at race meetings across the country, Grace said she has been hooked on Supercars for as long as she can remember.
She said watching her car race around the streets of her home town will be a "dream come true".
"I'll be very happy – I love drawing," she told Wide World of Sports.
The ecstatic motorsport nut got tours of the BJR garage earlier in the week, and has even made appearances on television. She said she dreams of one day being a Supercars driver.
Jones said the whole team was excited to be running the "unique" livery.
"We've done some photo shoots and some filming … she's never done any sort of TV stuff before, so I'm sure she had a pretty cool day at school after that," Jones told Wide World of Sports.
Lying 22nd in the standings, Jones has a love-hate relationship with the Adelaide circuit.
While it's a favourite among drivers, the former Grand Prix circuit is also the scene of the 29-year-old's biggest crash.
A brake failure at the fastest part of the circuit during Saturday practice for the 2019 event pitched him into a wall at well over 200km/h.
The damage kept him from lining up in his first ever race.
"But I still love this track – the atmosphere is really cool … I think we all get pretty damn excited to come here," he said.
"Hopefully it's going to be a strong weekend for us.
"We've sort of had up and down results a little bit this year, but it's all part of the Gen3 learning – the driving style and the engineering side of things for it."
Jones will not be the only driver competing in a different livery this weekend – Tickford Racing have also rolled out a Ken Block tribute livery for Cameron Waters.
Block, a stunt driver made famous with his stunning gymkhana videos in various insane cars, was killed in a snowmobile accident in January.
Block also test-drove a Supercar in 2011, and performed stunt demonstrations at the 2013 Adelaide 500 event.
Waters will also run Block's No.43 instead of his regular No.6, and will also carry branding from Block's 43 Institute, which aims to help young athletes get a foothold into action sports.
"I'll be out there doing my utmost to help celebrate Ken and aiming to stand on the top step of the podium just like he did so many times across his stellar career," Waters said in a statement.
"Ken was known for delivering some epic burnouts and having the potential to send the season and Ken out with one on my very own at R'Adelaide would be top drawer."
Brodie Kostecki is aiming to secure his maiden Supercars title in the two final races of the season across the weekend, but has Shane van Gisbergen hot on his heels.
Practice for the Adelaide 500 begins on Thursday afternoon ahead of twin 250km races on Saturday and Sunday.
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