Championship leader and renowned Hidden Valley guru Feeney managed just 13th in qualifying and 14th in the race.
While his race result was not helped by a lock-up and minor off-track excursion on the outlap from his pit stop, it was a lack of speed that was the story of his day.
“It’s a fine line, it’s not much, but you don’t quite get the balance right and you end up well back in the pack,” Whincup told Speedcafe.
“It’s a combination between him and his engineer not getting the most out of the car and paying the price for it.
“When you’re back in the pack, you’ve got to try an alternative strategy to do something (taking four tyres at the pit stop) and that didn’t pay off either.
“But ultimately just not enough pace. There was nothing wrong with the car, just didn’t get the balance right.
Buy tickets
“That’s the game we play. The difference between the quickest car and the slowest car is generally just the balance.
“Who does the best job of that generally wins.”
Triple Eight, which is attacking each track with the Mustang for the first time this year, also started slowly last time out at Symmons Plains.
There the team was lacklustre in Friday practice, improved to the podium on Saturday and then dominated Sunday.
“I’m not putting any weight on that, that we’re slow at the start of the weekend and build from there,” Whincup added.
“Everyone wants to be quick straight up and then fine-tune the car from there but of course at times we haven’t been there and have had to hustle.
“This is another one of those weekends for #88 where hopefully they can get there.”
Teammate Will Brown flew the Red Bull flag highest by driving from ninth on the grid to finish fifth.
Brown completed a Mustang sweep of the top five positions at a circuit in which the Blue Oval had not previously taken a victory in the Gen3 era.
That turnaround is some solace for Triple Eight, which took over Ford homologation team duties from Dick Johnson Racing this season.
“The majority of our off-season was on the Ford package, trying to increase reliability and make it more consistent with the GM,” he said.
“Absolutely we take pride in Fords winning.”
Feeney now holds a reduced 59-point lead over Matt Payne in the drivers’ championship, while Triple Eight is just 25 points ahead of Grove Racing in the teams’.
Discussion about this post