That statement followed an interesting radio exchange between Will Brown and the Triple Eight pit wall ahead of the final stint of Sunday’s finale in Townsville.
Looking to overhaul teammate Broc Feeney, Brown asked if he could pit early to try and get an undercut for the third stint.
That request was swiftly denied by the team, which outlined to Brown that the pit priority would remain with leader Feeney.
According to Triple Eight’s managing director Whincup, such exchanges are to be expected and drivers are allowed to express their points of view.
But ultimately, the team will come ahead of the individual.
“It’s a classic, ‘both drivers wanting to win the race’,” said Whincup.
“Broc wanted to win. Will’s going, ‘well, I want to win this thing. Can we undercut? Or what can we do to beat #88?’.
“But at the same time, you don’t want both screwing each other over racing too hard to then get done by [Chaz Mostert] or [Cam Waters].
“The drivers are entitled to ask what they want. And we’ve got a fantastic engineering group that handle it back at base.”
The outcome was readily accepted by Brown, who seemed unsurprised that his “whinging and bitching” fell on deaf ears.
“It is what it is,” he told Fox Sports. “We brief it before, and then you get in the heat of the moment and I start whinging and bitching straight away.
“But it’s one of those things; I felt that if it wasn’t a team car we would undercut them, and try and get them on the pit exit or something like that.
“Unfortunately, they’ve got pit preference. I wanted to go a little bit early, and the team said, ‘no, we’ll let them go when they want to go’.
“It’s life, there’s not much you can do about it. It’s always drivers in the heat of the moment, we always try our luck no matter what it is.”
Feeney outscored Brown in all three races across the weekend, and now holds a 220-point series lead heading into the final round of the Sprint Cup, the Ipswich Super440.
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