Triple Eight 'hurting' in Darwin, says Whincup
Triple Eight "hurting" in Darwin, says Jamie Whincup
Penrite Racing jumped Triple Eight in the teams’ championship
Broc Feeney 14th and seventh, Will Brown has brace of fifths
Jamie Whincup concedes Red Bull Ampol Racing is “hurting” in Darwin, and suggests the team will take a “swing” on Sunday.
The Triple Eight squad has been soundly beaten by Ford rivals Penrite Racing, Tickford Racing and Shell V-Power Racing Team at Hidden Valley.
Cam Waters and Kai Allen have shared the wins, with Matt Payne and Brodie Kostecki also standing on the podium. Broc Feeney and Will Brown, meanwhile, haven’t featured on the podium.
Brown has a brace of fifth place finishes, with Feeney struggling to 14th and seventh. Already, Payne has slashed his deficit to Feeney from 90 to 39 points, with Kostecki closing from 173 to 117 points.
On Sunday morning, Feeney quipped that his weekend has been “really tough." It's a stark contrast to the last three years in the Top End, with Feeney blazing to six wins in seven races between 2023 and 2025 — albeit, in. a Triple Eight Camaro.
Penrite Racing, meanwhile, has jumped Triple Eight in the teams’ championship. The Red Bull Ampol squad has led since New Zealand.
“We’ve just got no pace,” team boss Whincup said in a team video.
“It’s a common saying in motorsport — the best strategy is to have a fast car, and we just purely haven’t had the quickest race cars.
“So we’re hurting. There’s no worse feeling than just not having enough pace to be able to win the races.”
Per Supercars data analyst Scott Sinclair, Triple Eight has its lowest winning and podium percentages in 20 years.
Additionally, Brown’s two podiums from 18 races is the third worst return for a Triple Eight driver in the last 20 years, behind Whincup’s first year (2006) and Feeney’s first year (2022).
Whincup insists the team is doing the best it can with what it’s got, but has tipped a big swing at set-up on Sunday.
“The team have done a great job of maximising what we’ve got, but we’ve got. Bit of straight-line stuff to work on and of course getting through the corners," he continued.
“If you can get through the corner 1lm/h quicker, you look like a bit of. Hero down the straight. So plenty of work to do.
“I think we’re going to have a bit of a swing [on Sunday], we just can’t tune here, there or anywhere, we have got to have a bit of a crack at least on one car to see if we can make a gain.”
The final day of the betr Darwin Triple Crown begins with Boost Mobile Qualifying at 10:45am local time/11:15am AEST.
