Expert Analysis: The team orders headaches facing teams in The Finals

This is an exclusive pre-event Supercars.com column by championship-winning Race Engineer Scott Sinclair. Sinclair will preview and debrief each round of the 2025 Repco Supercars Championship from his own perspective.

We’ve never seen the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit host a championship round where the stakes are this high. In all 46 races held on the Gold Coast, there hasn’t been this much incentive to attempt a high-risk overtake.

This year is different. That one overtake could be the difference between elimination or keeping a title fight alive. If you’re unsure whether to take the risk, just ask Cameron Hill or Andre Heimgartner.

Post-Bathurst, after 26 races, Kai Allen secured his Finals spot by holding off Hill and Heimgartner by just three points. That three-point margin was the equivalent of one solitary position on track.

Had either Hill or Heimgartner successfully bombed down the inside, or defended with a little more aggression — just once all year — they’d have qualified for The Finals. While justifying that risk earlier in the season may have been difficult, it clearly goes to show: every moment matters.

Feeney and Payne’s crucial head start

The Finals points structure is set up to reward the Sprint Cup and Enduro Cup winners — the equivalent of a 'home-ground advantage' in other sports. This gives Broc Feeney and Matt Payne a handy points lead over those in eighth, ninth, and 10th places fighting to stay in contention.

While Feeney and Payne are by no means a certainty to progress, the fiercest fight for survival will be concentrated between fifth and 10th. Those six drivers — Brodie Kostecki, Chaz Mostert, Anton De Pasquale, Thomas Randle, Ryan Wood, and Kai Allen — start the weekend separated by only 45 points. A bad Saturday will make it extremely difficult for any of them to stay in the championship hunt.

The importance of qualifying

Qualifying at the front of the grid on the Gold Coast is more important than at any other track. Last year, the circuit was also ranked the most difficult for a driver to put their optimal lap together in qualifying. The two chicane sections are where time is easily gained or lost. Maximise these, and you’ll likely make the Top Ten Shootout.

Conversely, take too much kerb and trigger the shortcut sensor, and you pay a huge price. Not only do you lose your lap time and the best of your tyre performance, but you also go out of sync with the rest of the field.

It’s a very fine (and invisible) line to tread: conservative equals slow, too aggressive equals a shortcut infringement or your car in the concrete. The margins are tiny: the difference between qualifying 10th (earning a Shootout spot) or qualifying 11th and missing out is an average of just 0.017 seconds in the Gen3 era.

Finding the limits of the track in practice is crucial. All four Gen3 races here have been won from the front row — you’ve simply got to start near the front to be a contender.

Team orders headaches

How teams try to manipulate the coming races to ensure their car isn’t eliminated is going to be a major talking point. Imagine Kai Allen leading the race late on Sunday. He’s on target for his first career win, but teammate Matt Payne is sitting 10th and needs ninth to avoid elimination. As Team Principal, do you order Allen to sacrifice the win by dropping behind Payne, or do you let Allen take the win, knocking Payne out of the title fight?

Team 18 and Shell V-Power Racing Team have it easy with only one of their cars in The Finals. Sacrificing their second car to help Anton De Pasquale and Brodie Kostecki is a no-brainer. But for Penrite Racing, Tickford and Walkinshaw Andretti United, it’s more complicated. Do they prioritise their lead car by asking the lower-ranked car to pull aside, or do they ‘let them race’ — just as McLaren are trying to do with their two drivers at the moment?

Then there’s Red Bull Ampol Racing, where, despite Broc Feeney’s superior form, both he and Will Brown are genuine chances. One thing's for sure: if potential scenarios like the hypothetical Allen/Payne one haven’t been discussed prior to the weekend and you take the 'wait-and-see' approach, you’ll be faced with a complex decision on Sunday with very little time to make it.

There’s going to be so much to unpack as the weekend progresses. But let’s not overcomplicate it… having a fast car, starting at the front and making no mistakes is all it takes. Easy, right?

Scott Sinclair is one of the most respected voices in pit lane, famously engineering James Courtney to the 2010 championship with Dick Johnson Racing. Sinclair also spent stints at the Holden Racing Team and Kelly Racing, spent time on the Supercars Commission, and recently joined Supercars as a data analyst.

The 2025 Repco Supercars Finals Series commences at the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 on October 24-26. Tickets are on sale now. International viewers can watch all the action on SuperView.