de Silvestro to remain with Kelly Racing in 2019

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emailBy RACER Staff | October 22, 2018 11:42 AM ET

Simona de Silvestro will remain with Kelly Racing for the 2019 Supercars Championship, following earlier talk of a switch to Triple Eight as replacement for the retiring Craig Lowndes.

“There were a lot of rumors,” she told Australian broadcaster Fox Sports.

“I’ll be with Nissan [Kelly Racing] next year. I’m really excited to continue, actually. I think we learned a lot this year to get better; the car has also improved.

“Hopefully over the [off-season] we’ll get a little bit better and having that relationship working really well with Chris [Stuckey, her engineer] I think is going to give us a bigger step for next year.”

The 30-year-old had appeared destined for a move to Triple Eight until talks broke down last month, and team owner Roland Dane has since confirmed that he will hand back the Racing Entitlements Contract – an agreement that is mandatory for each entry, and assigned to car numbers – for the No.888 that Lowndes currently occupies, meaning that the team will scale back from three Holdens to two next season.

Kelly Racing will lose its factory Nissan backing at the end of this year, although the team will continue to field four Altimas in 2019.

de Silvestro currently sits 24th in the series standings, and achieved her career-best result of 12th at Barbagallo in May.