Brown: Time is now for Supercars young guns to step up

The 25-year-old is something of an ironic case considering he is embarking on his fourth full season in the top tier, won four races in 2023 with Erebus Motorsport – quintupling his tally relative to the end of 2022 – and was recruited as 34-year-old Shane van Gisbergen’s replacement.

His new team-mate at Triple Eight Race Engineering, Broc Feeney, is still just 21; another 21-year-old in Matt Payne is the most recent race winner; two of the three rookies in the field (Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Ryan Wood, Blanchard Racing Team’s Aaron Love) are 21 years of age or less; and 18-year-old Kai Allen is thought likely to be a full-time Dick Johnson Racing driver in 2025.

“I think that there’s more and more young guys coming in throughout the last couple of years, so I think that we have to step up,” said Brown, who was fastest in Friday practice at Mount Panorama from Feeney and 28-year-old Todd Hazelwood (Erebus Motorsport).

“This is my fourth year in main game Supercars but I feel like, over the last four or five years, there’s been a fair few young guys that have come in, and there’s going to be a changing of the guard there a little bit.”

Brown was just 22 years of age and previous team-mate Brodie Kostecki just 23 when they were both elevated to full-time rides at Erebus in 2021, before the latter won his and the team’s first drivers’ championship title in 2023.

While an all-rookie line-up was eye-catching then, Triple Eight’s decision to thrust Feeney into the hotseat of Car #88, as the direct successor of seven-time champion Jamie Whincup, was regarded as a bold, even if considered, move.

Feeney, the 2023 Sandown 500 winner, says now, “Look, I think when Erebus brought Will and Brodie in, it was probably a bit of a shock to a few people, and then I don’t think probably many expected Triple Eight to put a rookie in.

“I feel like the couple of teams that took that chance, it certainly paid off for them, and it’s awesome just to see the next gen coming through and teams believing in these young kids because they’re bloody fast.

“It’s pretty cool to see people like Matty Payne getting a win last year – and, obviously, we don’t want them to win; we want to win all the time – but it’s great to see the young kids coming through.”