Broc Feeney has praised the “quiet assassin” in his #88 camp after dominating Race 9 of the Repco Supercars Championship at the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint.
The Red Bull Ampol Racing driver qualified on pole position for the final encounter at Wanneroo Raceway and would go on to officially lead all 42 laps, having been last to take his compulsory pit stop.
It is a third race win of his career in the Supercars Championship and the second of the Gen3 era which is still only three events old.
Aside from being an almost entirely new technical beast, the new breed of Supercars feature less in-car adjustability, and hence nailing a set-up before the session is even more important than it used to be.
With that, Feeney gave great credit to his Race Engineer Martin Short, who has been with the Queenslander since his first year with Triple Eight Race Engineering, when they shared a victorious Dunlop Super2 Series campaign in 2021.
“We’re great,” said the 20-year-old.
“It’s like the quiet assassin, Marty. He doesn’t say a whole lot, but he says what he needs to at the right time, and he’s been great.
“It makes such a difference, having a good car underneath you, especially with these things that have got no tuning ability in the car, so, what they send you with is what you’ve got, and they did such a great job.
“We’ve been on the back foot, everyone’s been up and down so much, so being able to try to find a car that works for your driver…
“They certainly got that right today, so yeah, super grateful to those guys.”
It was an unquestionably strong finish to the event for Feeney, but that was not the case earlier in the weekend.
He finished 10th in Race 7 from 11th on the grid and then could only get up to 13th at the chequered flag after qualifying all the way back in 21st for Race 8, minutes before seizing pole for the finale.
The result leaves the #88 Chevrolet Camaro pilot leaves Western Australia fifth in the championship, 220 points off the pace set by Erebus Motorsport’s Brodie Kostecki.
“It’s unfortunate that we were slow at the start of the weekend,” said Feeney.
“But, we had it this morning; unfortunately made a mistake in Q2, but I had the pace Q3.
“To be honest, I didn’t think I was going to have the pace to run with [Erebus duo Will Brown and Kostecki, who rounded out the podium] in that last race, but clean air certainly helps.
“We made a few changes to the car for the last one, but it makes a massive difference just being out front and just being able to run your own race.
“I know if we can qualify there, we can do it; it’s just about putting it together.
“I suppose we missed out by so little yesterday, so anyway, it was a good day; we ended on a high.”
Feeney now switches to GT3 mode as Triple Eight begins its Fanatec GT World Challenge Asia powered by AWS campaign at the Buriram International Circuit.
After racing a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in Thailand on May 12-14, he will be back in his Camaro Supercar when the Ned Whisky Tasmania SuperSprint takes place a week later at Symmons Plains.