HAVING dominated the opening stages of the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship, Triple Eight’s Will Brown and Broc Feeney experienced a reality check on a miserable New Zealand day.
While Feeney has been off the pace since the get-go at Taupō, points leader Brown was a victory contender during the early stages of Saturday’s 60-lapper.
But a troublesome stint after the second Safety Car period buried both Red Bull Ampol Camaros back in the pack.
Having initially led the race, ninth ended up being a good result for Brown, who was the only driver to make his final stop before the halfway point of the race.
Feeney, who’d made his second tyre change even earlier, could not make it to the end and had to settle for 21st after pitting again.
It’s the first blip on the radar for Triple Eight in 2024, and an outing which Feeney is looking to quickly put in the past.
“The weather was pretty challenging today to say the least – it was a rollercoaster of a race,” said the #88 driver.
“I spun at the start but clawed our way back to a pretty good position, but overall it was tough one. We’ll forget about today and focus on tomorrow.
“After my spin, I felt like I made some really good moves and had some really good pace, but we sort of just lost that for the rest of the race.
“The conditions were very challenging today, I couldn’t really see anything but that’s no excuse to our result at all – everyone had to battle through the same conditions.”
Feeney’s lowly classification means Brown – whose top-two finishing streak is over – now has a 59-point buffer atop the standings.
“It was a pretty tough race for us,” said Brown.
“I got a good start and managed to get the lead which was really good before the Safety Car, but then I lost a fair bit of grip and didn’t have it underneath me later in the first stint.
“I had to pit early and go onto the tyres a lot earlier than we would have liked, which made the run home much more difficult.
“It was a hard stint home and we probably recovered as good as we could have, so overall it was a pretty tough day.
“We’ll tune it up for tomorrow and keep positive because we’ve been fast, but it was a tougher race than we would have liked.
“Tomorrow is looking dry, so we’ll go back to our dry set-up and look back at our car and those laps in the dry when we were fast, and just try to have a solid one tomorrow.”
Sunday qualifying will get underway at 8:45am AEST (10:45am local).
