Feeney was able to keep the team’s victory streak alive when he inherited a first place in Race 5 of the Supercars Championship due to a crash between Matt Payne and Cam Waters.
Come Race 6, they were finally beaten, by Matt Stone Racing’s Nick Percat, but both still finished on the podium thanks in no small part to Chaz Mostert pushing Payne off the road in a battle for the lead.
Asked by Speedcafe for their thoughts on the incidents, which so happen to have involved only Ford drivers, Brown put it down to playing the long game rather than an out-and-out quest for race wins.
“I think we’ve had a good start to the year and – not that we’re thinking about championship already – we don’t want to crash out,” said the championship leader.
“We know we’re going to be pretty strong this year, throughout the year, and I think a few other people are just going straight out for a race win, and I think we saw that today [Race 6].
“There’s some pretty fierce battles up the front, which I think is awesome – it’s really cool, how hard everyone’s racing – but, when you’re racing that hard, there’s going to be consequences when cars come together.
Secure your spot today.
“So, that’s part of it. I think it’s awesome; I think it’s great for people at home and TV and all of that.
“But, I think we’re probably looking at it a little bit more as a long year.”
Feeney, who has won three of the five races in the year to date, had much the same take.
“Yeah, pretty similar [opinion],” he remarked.
“We sat down this morning and said, ‘Look, we don’t need to win this race; we need to go out and finish nice and clean.’
“When we looked at who qualified up the front today, they’re all sort of going [ie attempting] to get that first win of the season, so we knew it was going to be on.
“Everyone’s battling really hard at the front whereas I think me and Will are still pushing super-hard – and we’ve obviously got real fast race cars, which should help – but, I suppose we’re probably looking long-term, just to keep ticking the points over and, fortunately for us, we’ve been up here [on the podium] a few times.”
Mostert, despite being the top-finishing Ford driver in the championship in 2023, was winless all season and remains so in 2024.
Waters picked up a victory in each of the final two events of 2023 but is yet to stand on a podium this year.
Payne’s first Supercars Championship podium came when he won the final race of the 2023 season, before he returned to the dais with third places in each of the first two races at the Australian Grand Prix event.
While he did not get very far before misfortune befell him in each of the subsequent encounters, he looked likely for more victories based on what had played out until those incidents.
Mostert issued his apologies to the Grove Racing team on television and personally in the paddock, while stewards declared the Payne-Waters crash a racing incident on the basis that both were deemed to have contributed to their downfalls.
The spate of incidents has put a spotlight on driving standards from within the Supercars paddock.
Discussion about this post