RED Bull Ampol Racing duo Broc Feeney and Will Brown are a new combination for this year’s Repco Supercars Championship, however their Triple Eight Race Engineering team are no strangers to silverware in the opening race of a championship season.
We feel we roll this stat out nearly every year but it’s for good reason – the Brisbane-based team keeps on finding a way to add to it!
Triple Eight has won 15 of the last 18 season-opening races in the Supercars Championship dating back to Craig Lowndes’ win in Adelaide in 2006.
That number would have been 16 of 18 last year had Shane van Gisbergen (and indeed teammate Feeney) not been excluded from the opening race in Newcastle due to the incorrect positioning of the dry ice box in his #97 Camaro.
The team’s succession of Betta Falcons, Vodafone Falcons and Commodores and Red Bull Commodores have won the first race of a season so many times it’s been a rarity for any other team to get a look in.
The only years since 2006 they didn’t win the first race were 2007 (Todd Kelly won for the Holden Racing Team in Adelaide), 2019 (Scott McLaughlin for DJR Team Penske in Adelaide) and last year (Cam Waters in Newcastle after the exclusion of the 1-2 finishing Red Bull Ampol Camaros).
Jamie Whincup won the first race of the season in Adelaide in eight of the nine years from 2008 through to 2016, his steak only broken by teammate Craig Lowndes in the first race of the Car of the Future era in 2013.
Shane van Gisbergen won the first race of the season four times during his tenure with the team: in 2017 and 2018 in Adelaide, in 2021 at Bathurst and in 2022 at Sydney Motorsport Park.
The first race of the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship will be held today (Saturday March 24) at Mount Panorama.
Triple Eight is looking in ominous form, with Broc Feeney and Will Brown topping the two practice sessions yesterday.
