Feeney enters the final 250km of the season holding a 23-point lead over Chaz Mostert following an emphatic Saturday victory.
The 23-year-old made a sensational move on Mostert’s Walkinshaw Andretti United teammate Ryan Wood at the start of the final stint to take a lead he would never relinquish.
However, it could have all been over in the first 10 laps as a malfunctioning crank angle sensor on the Chevrolet V8 engine threatened to bring him undone.
“I thought I was done to be honest,” said Feeney post-race.
“There was a lot going through my head. It literally felt like my engine was going to blow up any minute.
“After a while it all sort of cleared up and got going again. For those first 10 laps I really struggled and feared the worst.”
Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton revealed to Speedcafe post-race that the sensor issue was a known problem heading into the weekend.
“We were super nervous. Those sensors have been playing up across the GMs,” said Dutton, whose team is in its last race with GM before switching to Ford next season.
“We preemptively swapped it out for a brand-new [sensor] to be as best prepared as you can, and it unfortunately didn’t work in the way we wanted it to.
“The good thing is it lasted the race, but it had intermittent issues. It could have stopped the car on track.”
The issue is believed to be heat related, explaining why it disappeared once Feeney was freed from the back of Aaron Cameron’s Mustang.
Dutton said there are no clear answers and the team will simply swap back to the previous sensor for today’s title decider.
“We’ll put in the sensor that we came here with before we swapped it out, because that ran trouble-free at Sandown on the Sunday,” he said on Saturday evening.
“Therefore that’s had a race trouble-free, so we think it’s a safer bet because it’s done more miles in the car, which is more of a proof than bench testing.
“But it’s not the most comfortable position you’d like to be in.”
Triple Eight still has two cars in the title fight, with Will Brown third and 76 points adrift of Feeney with just 125 points left on the table.
Although Brown is a long shot, Dutton said it’s too early to put all the team’s effort behind Feeney.
“I don’t think you can, because as we saw today, car #88 was quite possibly about to stop on track with this sensor thing,” he said.
“The challenge is to make sure you got both opportunities up there. You can’t put all your eggs in one basket, because it’s so easy to turn on you if you do that.”
Grove Racing’s Kai Allen also remains in title contention, 88 points adrift of Feeney following a fifth-place finish in the Saturday race behind Brown.
The Mostert and Allen Fords also suffered engine trouble on Saturday.
Mostert’s car had a starter motor wiring issue during qualifying, while Allen’s engine was off-song during the Shootout but rectified in time for the race.
Discussion about this post