Feeney breaks through with Holden’s final ATCC race win

Broc Feeney has scored his first race win in the Supercars Championship and Holden’s very last after beating Chaz Mostert to the chequered flag at the Valo Adelaide 500.

Feeney assumed the lead on Lap 24 of Race 34 when Will Davison bowled a wide and the Red Bull Ampol Racing driver was not headed, at least in effective terms, for the remaining 54 laps.

Mostert kept the rookie honest, however, in a battle which would decide whether Triple Eight Race Engineering would stand alone as Holden’s most prolific championship race winner or whether Walkinshaw Andretti United could tie it up.

The Race 33 winner chipped Feeney’s lead back to three quarters of a second with less than three laps to go but could not get any closer to the #88 ZB Commodore.

Feeney’s victory is Triple Eight’s 190th for Holden, which now bows out of the Australian Touring Car Championship after more than six decades of history.

Mostert officially finished 0.9643s behind in the #25 Mobil 1 Optus ZB Commodore, with Anton De Pasquale a distant third in the #11 Shell V-Power Mustang.

Shane van Gisbergen got back to fifth in the other Triple Eight/Red Bull Ampol entry after having to stack under Safety Car and then serve a drive-through penalty for a restart breach.

However, he is now officially the drivers’ champion for the second time in a row and third in total.

The two Dick Johnson Racing Fords started Holden’s final race on the front row and pole-sitter De Pasquale led the field down to Wakefield Street after Davison had to get back into file for Senna Chicane.

Van Gisbergen (#1 ZB Commodore) bested Feeney from the second row, and the latter came under early pressure from Mostert.

Mostert ceded fifth position to Cameron Waters (#6 Monster Energy Mustang) when he ran wide at Turn 9 on Lap 2, as van Gisbergen continued to tail Davison’s #17 Mustang.

The front-runners had started to string out by the time Feeney pitted from fourth on Lap 11, at about 3.7s from the lead.

Davison was in two laps later from 1.0s behind De Pasquale and rejoined just ahead of #88.

Meanwhile, van Gisbergen had upped his pace and was 1.2s behind De Pasquale when a Safety Car was called on Lap 18 after Jake Kostecki (#56 Tradie Mustang) crunched the wall at Turn 8.

Everyone who had not pitted took the opportunity to do so, with Davison assuming the lead, from Feeney, De Pasquale, an early-stopping David Reynolds (#26 Penrite Mustang), van Gisbergen, Brodie Kostecki (#99 Boost Mobile ZB Commodore), Waters, and Mostert in eighth.

De Pasquale and van Gisbergen had reportedly taken on about 20 litres more fuel than their team-mates, explaining the position shuffle.

Upon the Lap 22 restart, Feeney attacked Davison, who slid it off Turn 4 and bottled the pack up.

Van Gisbergen got caught wide through the Terraces and ceded a number of positions, although he got one back when Brodie Kostecki then bumped the wall at Turn 8.

The net result was that Waters had risen to fifth, from Mostert, Will Brown (#9 Boost Mobile ZB Commodore), van Gisbergen, and Kostecki, who pressed on.

Van Gisbergen re-passed Brown on Lap 23 at Turn 9 and there was a change for the lead when Davison ran wide at the same spot a lap later, letting Feeney through.

Van Gisbergen overtook Mostert up Bartels Road on Lap 30 and was fourth once he outbraked Waters at Turn 9 on Lap 31 and then Reynolds exactly two laps later.

Waters forced his way past Car #26 there, on Lap 34, and Mostert followed him through on exit, as Feeney stretched his lead over Davison beyond three seconds.

Matters got worse for DJR in a matter of moments when Davison ran off and headbutted the Turn 11 tyre wall on Lap 40, then De Pasquale ran wide at Turn 14 on Lap 41 to hand second place to van Gisbergen.

Davison pitted immediately and the damage to DJR was reduced somewhat when Bryce Fullwood (#14 Middy’s ZB Commodore) hit the wall at Turn 8, causing a Safety Car under which De Pasquale would otherwise have had to stack.

Van Gisbergen, however, did have to stack behind Feeney, delaying De Pasquale’s exit from the box behind and allowing Mostert to jump Car #11.

Car #1 was investigated over its pit stop but cleared, although the damage from the stack had been done.

Feeney led from Mostert, De Pasquale, Waters, Andre Heimgartner (#8 R&J Batteries ZB Commodore), Brown, Reynolds, and Davison in eighth, four positions up on ‘SVG’.

Van Gisbergen picked off Holdsworth at the Lap 49 restart as Thomas Randle (#55 Castrol Mustang) spun when the pack compressed at the final corner, before he even got back to the control line.

Van Gisbergen jumped to seventh on Lap 50 when Davison, apparently trying to cover Brodie Kostecki, outbraked himself at Turn 9 and clattered into Reynolds, which held up James Courtney (#5 Snowy River Caravans Mustang) and Kostecki.

Davison was soon handed a 15-second penalty as van Gisbergen got by Brown and Heimgartner in a matter of laps to be fifth and catching Waters, who was still tailing De Pasquale.

Waters’ attack on De Pasquale cost him when he got caught wide of the line at Turn 5 on Lap 58, ended up wider still and letting #1 through.

Van Gisbergen was third when he lunged past De Pasquale on Lap 62 at Turn 9, but then the Holdsworth restart pass would come back to haunt him.

Stewards deemed it a breach, presumably because he overlapped within the apex phase of the corner rather than ‘after’ (per Rule D10.2.12.2), and he served a drive-through penalty on Lap 64.

Car #1 dropped to 13th again while, up the front, the gap between Feeney and Mostert had been ebbing and flowing around one second for a dozen laps or so.

As van Gisbergen sought to recover yet again, the race otherwise developed into something of a rhythm.

Mostert started to close in on Feeney again, getting the margin down to 0.8s with three laps to go, but the gap was back out to 1.1249s with one lap remaining in the season.

Feeney secured victory in the last race of his rookie season, from Mostert, De Pasquale, Waters, Heimgartner, and Brown.

Van Gisbergen gradually made his way back up to seventh, from Kostecki, Holdsworth, and James Golding (#31 Subway ZB Commodore) in 10th, with Davison classified last of those still on the lead lap, back in 19th, once the penalty was applied.

The 2023 pre-season starts with the Gen3 shakedown for northern teams at Queensland Raceway on January 30.

Results: Race 34, Valo Adelaide 500

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