The Red Bull Ampol Racing driver stormed through from 15th on the grid to second in the opening 250km leg, nabbing the runner-up spot from Ryan Wood in a robust late battle.
It was the latest in a series of recovery missions this year for the reigning champion, who on Saturday labelled his season to date as “pretty disappointing”.
Saturday marked the sixth straight race in which Brown has started 10th or worse.
“We’ve looked so much into it,” he said on Saturday evening of the qualifying struggles.
“You look into it, we know it’s been our deficit, we’ve spoken about it all year. If we could put our finger on it, you’d fix it. But right now, it’s been all different reasons.
“I feel like today, we struggled a little bit with other things than just driving,” he continued, referring to running too early in the Q2 session in which he was eliminated.
Secure your spot today.
“Other days, I’ve made mistakes, all different things.
“It hasn’t just been one thing over the last pretty much six months of poor qualifying. We’ve just got to piece it together.
“Sometimes you get on a roll at the end of the day, and sometimes you don’t. I feel like we’re down at the bottom of the hill right now, hopefully we can climb our way out.”
While an ability to carve through the field is some solace, it creates risky situations such as that seen on Saturday.
“We generally move forward, but the biggest thing with qualifying is, yeah we’re going to move forward, but we’re putting ourselves at high risk, qualifying in that area,” he said.
“There’s a crash up front, you end up in a pile up, anything like that. The safest place to start is on pole.”
Second for Brown and fourth for teammate Broc Feeney on Saturday netted Triple Eight the Supercars teams’ championship title for a 13th time.
Brown enters today’s Sandown finale third in points, 56 above the elimination line.
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