Neither Broc Feeney nor Will Brown finished on the podium at the Townsville 500 in a weekend punctuated by poor qualifying.
Feeney qualified 16th on Friday and 18th on Saturday before making a marked improvement on Sunday. He initially qualified fifth before setting the seventh-fastest time in the Top 10 Shootout.
Brown, however, had a weekend to forget. He qualified 19th, 12th and 19th again across the three races.
With finishes of seventh, sixth and eighth, Brown made up a whopping 29 places in total. Feeney, meanwhile, improved in all three contests to 10th, eighth and sixth.
It’s the first time since 2006 that the team has gone six races without a podium.
Feeney lamented “another tough weekend” behind the wheel of an ill-handling Ford Mustang that lacked one-lap pace.
Buy tickets
“The results aren’t representing the effort going in, which is a tough thing because everyone’s working extremely hard to try and fix our weaknesses,” said Feeney.
“We came here with a really good plan this weekend to try some different things.
“That was sort of our Friday, didn’t really work out, didn’t go to plan. Went in another direction [on Saturday] to try and right it all. Tough day.”
“Another direction here on Sunday and I felt like today especially in qualifying we were a bit more in the fight.
“I’d say we’re in that sort of top five group, but it’s a car that right now is so hard to drive. Very easy to make mistakes in.”
Triple Eight’s troubles dropped Feeney out of the lead of the drivers’ championship, which is now led by Grove Racing’s Matt Payne.
The gap between them sits at 92 points heading into the penultimate round of the Sprint Cup in Perth.
Feeney welcomed a needed improvement on Sunday to stem the bleeding.
“Seventh in the Top 10 Shootout, sixth in the race, just an up-and-down day and weekend across the board,” he said.
“We’re still searching for our sweet spot setup-wise, but then there are times this weekend where Will and I are eight tenths off in qualifying.
“We’re off by not a little bit, it’s a lot of pace we’re looking for.
“But as I said, everyone is working really hard, we’re going back and back to the drawing board, we’ll get it but we’ve got to keep working at it until we do.”
Brown is in the midst of his leanest run with Triple Eight, having not stood on the podium since the first race at Taupo earlier this year.
While Feeney has four wins, Brown has yet to score a breakthrough victory in a Triple Eight Ford Mustang.
Brown’s last win was at Queensland Raceway at the Ipswich Super440, nearly a year ago last August, in a Chevrolet Camaro.
“To be better in qualifying it’s for me about minimising mistakes, don’t make them, be fast and be consistent every time you go out there,” said Brown.
“I felt like I did a good job for what I had this weekend, but you know if we get everything 100 percent perfect hopefully, who knows, we can start just that little bit further up.
“Looking forward to going to Perth and just having another weekend on track to try and redeem ourselves, try and be faster in this car, try and get up there.”
Supercars continues its season at Wanneroo Raceway on July 31-August 2 for the Perth Super440.
Feeney’s next race is GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS at Hidden Valley on July 24-26 with Melbourne Performance Centre and co-driver Brad Schumacher.
Discussion about this post