Will the Darwin Triple Crown be the moment the 2024 Supercars championship was turned?
Series leader Will Brown was on a roll. One-way traffic in Taupō and Perth blew out his title lead over teammate Broc Feeney by a whopping 119 points, up from 17 to 136.
What had been billed as an intrateam title fight for the ages, battled out between two future leaders of the sport, looked like it was petering out fast.
Watch every lap of the Bristish F1 GP, NTI Townsville 500 + German MotoGP LIVE and ad-break free during racing this weekend on Kayo. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
“I couldn’t keep conceding rounds to Will,” Feeney told Fox Sports.
“There’ve been a lot of rounds where arguably we were equal speed or had the potential to probably get the points over him, but he’s edged us over a lot.”
New Zealand and Perth weren’t among those races.
Sunday in Taupō was particularly chastening, being hunted down and passed by his teammate, but Perth was even worse, with Feeney lacking the pace all weekend. Brown collected two more podiums — he’s been off the rostrum only once all year — while Feeney finished fifth and seventh, haemorrhaging points.
The intervening weeks between Wanneroo and Hidden Valley were deeply introspective for Feeney, who many had assumed would lead Triple Eight as Brown brought himself up to speed after years with Erebus.
“I feel like I lost my mojo a bit,” he wrote in his diary on the Red Bull website. “The way we were going with the car, I was probably struggling a little bit to adapt to it.
“I’m pretty hard on myself. I think I’ve been like that since day dot. I don’t think I’ll ever change.
“If I have a bad weekend, I want to know why and I want to know what I can do differently at the next one. I need to understand things. I really don’t like not answering a question from the previous round.
“There was obviously a bit of stuff that went on in between Perth and Darwin. There was a lot of self-analysing. I spoke to a lot of people in the team. I’ve mentioned chatting with [Roland Dane].
“It was just about really being myself again and just having some fun on the weekend.”
Darwin’s position on the calendar was timely. It’s a track Feeney had been at his best the previous year, sweeping to three podium places and a round victory in a run of successes that inserted him into the title conversation.
He hit the ground running this year and never looked back. He dominated both races and took pole in the Sunday shootout. Only a superb James Golding prevented him from a total clean sweep, relegating Feeney to second on the grid for Saturday’s race.
“To rock up in Darwin and be right in the mix on day one just boosted my team’s confidence that we can do it,” he wrote.
“Then we had such a good base for the rest of the weekend, and to just continue that trend all weekend was the biggest thing from the weekend that I’d take away.
“It’s the first time in my career I’ve won back to back. I certainly had the speed to do it earlier in the year, but I didn’t execute, so to do two complete days —two shootouts, a pole and two wins — I think just shows how much of a good weekend we had.”
It was a statement drive as the season reaches its halfway mark that Feeney wouldn’t going down without a fight — and that the adjustments to his approach were working.
“It’s still a learning process for me, certainly this year,” he wrote. “Last year probably not everyone expected me to be winning and be in the championship fight. I was the underdog.
“Now it’s just me and Will and Chaz (Mostert) going at it, and it’s different, but it’s just about going and enjoying being in the fight and taking on every challenge that hits you.”
But with Mostert falling 279 points adrift of the lead as Walkinshaw Andretti United struggles for consistency, particularly with the supersoft tyre, the sport needs Feeney to be firing.
“Momentum is a big thing and confidence is too,” he told Fox Sports.
“We couldn’t let another one slip away. There’s still certainly things to work on for us, but just getting the ball rolling again and getting the momentum is certainly a big key. I’m stoked to walk away with a couple of wins.”
It’s the sort of rivalry that could define this era of the sport.
Feeney is a long-time Triple Eight protégé, drafted in as Jamie Whincup’s replacement and moulded by two seasons partnered with Shane van Gisbergen.
Brown is the young gun Erebus took a punt on and whose rise in the sport helped the plucky privateer to its unlikely teams championship in 2023 before he took up the challenge for racing for the sport’s biggest brand this season.
Today they get along, and perhaps their easygoing relationship will last between the two affable 20-somethings.
But there’s also no doubt they’re challenging each other to lift their games. The personal tension may so far be absent, but the competitive tension is real.
“There are certainly some things Will’s better at and some things I’ve been able to be a little bit better at as well, so it’s just understanding that, what I need to adapt in my driving to get better,” Feeney said.
“You want that someone that’s really going to push, and he’s certainly been doing that this year.
“I’m really excited for what the future brings between me and him, because I think it’s going to be a great battle for us over the next few years.”
It’s now up to Feeney to prove Darwin was more than just the stars aligning at a circuit that’s always suited his driving style.
We’re in a critical phase of the championship. Titles aren’t won in winter, but they’re certainly set up here ahead of the big points-paying endurance rounds that begin tying up the campaign in the spring.
“When I look at the championship I separate it into three or four [section],” he said. “I did the first three rounds, which you’ve got Bathurst [500]; New Zealand, which is a new track; and grand prix — all sort of different.
“Then we hit Perth and we get back to our usual tracks until enduro time.
“This mid part of the year is really just trying to set up the end of the year, just be in the hunt come enduro time, get the ball rolling, the momentum going, and then [in] enduros anything can happen. You go for the win at those two and set up the end of the year.
“It’s a big focus trying to just be in the fight for those next three or four rounds, not having the bad days like we’ve had. We had a good run through the middle last year with a few wins.
“We’ve just got to have another good run in Townsville.”
While Feeney has mostly happy memories of Darwin, the story is more complicated in Townsville.
His podium run came to an end around Reid Park last year, and Triple Eight, attempting to help Van Gisbergen fire back into title contention, tripped itself up with a team orders fracas in the closing stages of Sunday.
With the exception of Van Gisbergen’s solitary victory in Sydney at the following round, Townsville started a long podium drought for the team that lasted until the endurance season, by which time the championship was already a long shot.
But with a year of Gen3 under the team’s belt, Triple Eight has slowly resumed its place as the powerhouse of the series. Already it has an almost 1000-point lead over the pack, with the Banyo-based engineers troubleshooting and problem-solving their way through the calendar more effectively than their rivals.
Walkinshaw Andretti Untied, the team’s closest challenger, still struggles with some tyre compounds and certain track layouts. Dick Johnson Racing has just three podiums to show for its season. Its cars have finished inside the top 10 just 13 times from 24 attempts.
“Week in, week out, even if they roll out and they’re not quick, they can turn the thing around so quick,” James Courtney said of Triple Eight, per V8 Sleuth.
“l think it’s just down to the depth in the team with their engineering.
“l think [head of performance] Pete Ringwood is a brain in there that probably doesn’t get enough credit for what he deserves.
“I think he does an amazing job — all the guys there do — and the two boys, they are obviously steering the thing pretty well. They are having a great little championship of their own at the moment.
“Hopefully the rest of the field can catch up and start to mix it up with them, but they’re showing us a clean set of heels so far this year, really.”
It’s no surprise, then, that Feeney, huffed up on new-found confidence, is relishing the challenge of Townsville’s twin 250-kilometre races.
“Townsville’s always a really enjoyable event, but it’s always suited Triple Eight,” he said.
“I’m stoked to be doing long races again. I’m just looking forward to getting back out there.
“There’s so much to it. Obviously a lot of strategy, which I really enjoy. I love people doing different strategies with fuel and tyres and making different things work.
“But also you’ve got to do such long stints on the tyres, which makes it quite fun and also super challenging for us.
“It’s a long race around here. It’s pretty tolling on the body. It’s pretty hot. It’s a hard circuit. It’s an exciting race. you never know where you’re going to be until the last stint, and then it’s hell for leather until the end.
“It’s just exciting. We haven’t really done a street track this year. We’ve had Melbourne and Bathurst, but to rub your mirrors against walls again and to get that thrill of a street track is what you miss in a few rounds.
“I’m pumped to be back here.”
Last season was one of only three events in Townsville history and the first in almost a decade to pass without a Triple Eight victory, the last dating back to Mark Winterbottom’s 2015 domination of the track.
The feat is unlikely to be repeated. The most important question is whether Brown or Feeney has the best chance of preventing the streak.
The answer to that question, on the eve of the halfway mark of the campaign, could define what sort of championship battle we’re likely to have for the rest of the season.
