Expert Preview: Test turbulence, Toyota and Triple Eight, who will win
Supercars are back. A lot has happened since the Grand Final in Adelaide, but it’s finally time to let the leaderboard do the talking.
The push to the first event is always relentless. Some teams will arrive at Sydney Motorsport Park already fatigued, having worked around the clock to get new cars built.
We see the shiny, finished product on track, but not the grind that went into building it. But that first moment your new car takes to the circuit makes every late night worth it.
Test day turbulence
The minute-by-minute test plans engineers spent weeks fine-tuning went straight into the bin with the news that the full SMP circuit was unavailable. Not having access to the full circuit and splitting the test across two days is an annoyance, but not everyone will be upset.
Those that had issues on day 1 will consider it a blessing. The reset gives them a second chance, and the head start gained by others on the shorter circuit isn't nearly as valuable as it would've been on the full layout. Based on Wednesday’s lap count, it seems the Toyotas may be the biggest beneficiaries of a 24-hour break.
Triple Eight's new Mustangs
There's always a learning curve when you switch cars, and Triple Eight are right in the middle of theirs. But with so much change across the entire pitlane this off-season, new cars, new drivers, new engineer pairings, the playing field is more level than it might otherwise be.
Triple Eight's superpower has always been their disciplined approach to building a ‘toolkit’ - a library of car set-ups they can call on in any conditions. Building that library with new machinery will take a few events, but they've switched manufacturers and models before and won championships soon after. Don't expect them to be down for long, if at all.
Feeney's 2026 approach
How last year ended for Broc Feeney is well documented. What remains to be seen is whether we see a different approach to his racing this year.
One downside of starting nearly 70% of last year's races from the front row is limited exposure to the crash-and-bang in the pack. Chaz Mostert entered the Finals battle-hardened, having gained a total of 110 positions throughout the season. Feeney gained just 30. Any driver would prefer to qualify as well as Feeney did and lead from the front, but the Championship format doesn't reward that dominance as much as it used to.
That said, Feeney did very little wrong last year. Had it not been for that sensor failure in the final race, the narrative surrounding his season would be completely different.
Toyota arrives
The debut of the Toyota Supra is one of the headline stories of the weekend. A third manufacturer joining Chevrolet and Ford adds a layer of intrigue that the championship hasn't had in years.
How Ryan Wood adapts to his Toyota for his third full-time season will be a fascinating subplot. Wood is clearly fast: He ended last season ranked #2 for qualifying, behind only the record-breaking Feeney. No second-year driver in the last decade improved their year-on-year qualifying average as much as Wood did. But qualifying speed and race results didn't always align: he was the lowest-ranked of all 24 drivers for positions gained per race. Put simply, he went backwards more than anyone.
The Finals format is more forgiving of a slow start to the season, but Wood and his fellow Toyota drivers will be hoping for a reliable, competitive car from the outset.
Who wins this weekend?
The three standouts for me are those who've had the least amount of change over the off-season: Brodie Kostecki, Cam Waters, and Matt Payne.
Kostecki's first season with Dick Johnson Racing was a roller coaster. Last year, he spent more time in the pits during practice than anyone else, by a considerable margin. But when it came to the races, he was ranked #1 for tyre management. That metric matters this weekend given SMP's notoriously abrasive surface.
While Cam Waters dominated at SMP last year, it won't be as simple as bolting in that car set-up. His Mustang has had a couple of aero tweaks since last year, and correlating the effect of those changes will likely be a core focus of his test day program.
Payne's 2025 championship dreams ultimately ended with a miscalculation while trying to overtake Cam Waters at Sandown, knocking him out of the finals. He went on to win the last race of the year, however, and if he continues to improve at the rate he has across his first three seasons, his name will be on this year's Sprint Cup trophy.
There'll no doubt be others who pop up across the weekend, but with three races on the schedule, I'm backing Kostecki, Waters, and Payne to leave Sunday night with the most points.
Whatever happens, the best thing about the season starting is we can stop speculating, and start watching.
