Saturday Talking Points: Nice guys don't always finish last
It was a day to remember in Adelaide for Triple Eight Race Engineering, with Broc Feeney victorious and Will Brown clinching the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship.
Feeney benefited from a wasteful Tickford Racing to cruise home, but a resurgent Brown sealed the crown with two late moves, once again proving he always had an answer.
There's no doubt who the title will go to in 2024, but with one race to go, the gloves will come off on Sunday.
Brown a worthy champion
With 18 podiums in 23 races, Brown was the driver of 2024. It had to be him, and through all the stories and talk of a Saturday shocker, the Queenslander was brilliant, carving past Cam Waters and Thomas Randle to prove he could win the title with another famous performance. Remarkably, Brown became the first driver since Dick Johnson in 1984 to take a podium at every single event of a season.
Feeney superb, but mid-season slump costly
If you end a season with an average finish of 4.9 and with six wins, usually, you'd win the title. Feeney did everything he could this year, but Brown was too good. When Brown wasn't fastest, he got a trophy, or big points at worst. Feeney, meanwhile, missed out on too many occasions to put Brown under any conceivable pressure following their Taupō battle. Back to the drawing board for '25.
Tickford trips over again
It just seemed like it was never meant to be for the Ford team on Saturday. Randle controlled the first stint, but fell away to a distant fifth. Waters could have won the race, but a tyre mix-up at his final stop was the nail in the coffin on a day the team scored a front row lockout, only to end with a third and a fifth. Of course, not a result to scoff at, but to beat Triple Eight, you first can't beat up yourself.
Turn 8 delivers chaos for Groves
For the second time in as many days, a fill-in driver was called upon for one of the 24 regulars in the Repco Supercars Championship. Whilst Jack Le Brocq was encouraged home by Erebus for the birth of his first child, the circumstances could not be more different for Grove Racing. After a 52G hit with the Turn 8 wall yesterday, Richie Stanaway was deemed unfit to race today after displaying delayed concussion symptoms, with the team initially putting the call-out to enduro pilot turned TV expert Garth Tander to fill in, only for the five-time Bathurst winner to not have any driving gear on hand. 2025 recruit Kai Allen was next in line, but that plan was skittled by regulations prohibiting double duties between Supercars and Super2 unless signed off by all second-tier teams, and Eggleston Motorsport blocking the move regardless amid a fight for the Super2 teams' championship. That meant an 11th hour call to Tander's fellow enduro recruit Dale Wood, who was rushed in having just finished second in the preceding Carrera Cup race, almost seven years to the day since his last solo Supercars start at Newcastle in 2017. The 41-year-old performed admirably, keeping the car off the walls to finish 22nd, and will likely remain on standby for Sunday.
Baptism of fire for Murray
Wood's fellow stand-in Cooper Murray endured a torrid day in his Erebus debut, after a promising opening few laps. Having started 16th, Murray was battling with Ryan Wood in the opening laps of the race, and had worked his way up into 13th before his race unravelled. Murray's front right guard came loose after nose-to-tail contact, and was forced to serve a mechanical black flag as the guard was sticking out at right angles to where it should've been. What should've been a quick fix was prolonged by the need to replace a front chassis rail extension, the same problem that curtailed teammate Brodie Kostecki's Thursday practice. The guard would pop back out two more times on Murray throughout the race, and he would also cop a 15-second penalty for spinning Mark Winterbottom despite being several laps down at the time. Murray would end up eight laps down in 24th and last, with his misery compounded by Kostecki climbing from 11th to sixth and Wood finishing 10th.
