Shop
The Toowoomban is leading the Supercars Championship after his first two events with Red Bull Ampol Racing, with podiums – two wins, four second places – in all six races thus far in 2024.
He was also leading the championship at the halfway mark of the 2023 campaign, when he was domiciled at Erebus, at which point Shane van Gisbergen’s eventual departure from Australia for a new career in NASCAR became increasingly likely.
That left Triple Eight in an awkward position given the cadence of the driver market, with van Gisbergen himself understood to have helped sound out potential replacements.
In the end, the team found its man in Brown, as he recounted in the latest Red Bull Ampol Racing The Quarterly Report.
However, he admitted that it was a difficult decision to make given the success which he had been enjoying with Erebus.
“It was one of those things I didn’t expect,” said Brown of taking the phone call from Triple Eight.
“You know, last year I was going really well with Erebus and I was contracted for this year, so it was it was a really weird time for me.
“I was actually leading the championship after Townsville – got a win up there and leading it going into Sydney – and that’s when everything went down,
“So, it was a massive call. You know, you’re leading the championship with a team you’ve been with for six years and the best team probably in V8 Supercar history – Triple Eight/Red Bull Ampol – come knocking on the door.
“Obviously, you want to listen and make that work, but it was a hard one for me to make the jump.
“I knew I wanted to, and wanted to move across to the team, but just making it all work was the hardest thing.
“It took probably a month or two to get it all nutted out and then when it got close, it sort of hit the media before it got done, so that was a hard thing to work through as well.
“You’re sort of in limbo for a bit there – you don’t really have a contract either way – and it was probably a little bit of a ballsy move at the time but it worked.”
Brown now shares a garage with Broc Feeney, a fellow 20-something who is in his third year as a full-time Supercars Championship driver with Triple Eight.
As for their predecessors, though, van Gisbergen had been with the squad for eight years, and present-day Team Principal Jamie Whincup as a full-time driver for exactly twice as long, collectively winning seven Bathurst 1000s and 10 drivers’ championships in cars run out of Banyo.
For Brown, then, the especially rare chance to join Triple Eight was too big to pass up, and Erebus owner Betty Klimenko granted him permission to leave.
“I remember actually saying in my head, if I turn down this opportunity or don’t make this work, I’m going to kick myself forever,” he recalled.
“So, literally at that stage, when I said that, I thought, ‘I’ve just got to try to do everything I can to make this work.’
“As I say, I was very fortunate with what happened there and Betty allowing me to do this, and it’s a long-term thing, and that’s the biggest thing for me.
“I think, looking at other teams, a lot of the time it gets to a stage [when] the driver might be quite good but they have a few tough years or a tough year and then they look at what’s the reason and generally, unfortunately, the drivers get on the chopping block a lot of the time.
“With Triple Eight, they seem to put the resources and their experience behind the drivers that you don’t seem to have those lull years, or that sort of stuff, so that was a massive thing for me.”
Brown will square off against 2023 champion Brodie Kostecki as former team-mates for the first time at this weekend’s ITM Taupo Super400, where the latter makes his sensation return to the driver’s seat of an Erebus Camaro.
