Triple Eight’s concern in Brown, Feeney battle

The two Triple Eight drivers battled it out for Race 2 honours in New Zealand with a lengthy stint of door-to-door racing.

Brown was the quicker of the pair while Feeney initially had track position, the former needing to work hard on the twisty layout to wrangle the lead and ultimately the race win.

While the drivers relished the battle, there was some tension in the T8 garage as race engineers Andrew Edwards and Martin Short oversaw their respective drivers.

According to team manager Mark Dutton there was a willingness and trust to let Brown and Feeney race, although there was always one eye on contact, given how easy it to dislodge the rear bar on the Gen3 cars and up with a black flag.

“It was awesome because yeah, there’s tension, but most of the tension is between the two race engineers,” Dutton told Speedcafe.

“It’s all in good value and good fun and very respectful. But each is rowing their own boat for their particular car. And that’s their job.

“It’s my job to make sure the the two boys played nice, which they do. We’ve got such good transparency and honest communication throughout the whole team, and the drivers on track are actually having fun.

“At one point I actually tried to remind that to the engineers, because you’ve got to be happy when you’re in that position.

“But in the same sense, it’s always measured. It’s not reckless, because the rear bars on these cars are a bit fragile. Then we look like complete idiots if we let them play too hard and then we throw away a one-two.

“But we signed Will knowing we could trust him to race like that. Yes, it’s awesome when they prove it, but it was never a question.”

As thrilled as the team was with the one-two, Dutton also admitted that Brown’s clear pace advantage over Feeney was something that will require investigation before Perth next month.

“Will had a good step up, so we need to understand that from within the team,” he said.

“We don’t just say ‘woohoo, good on you’ because both cars were the quickest out there. Will was a step ahead of Broc, so we need to understand where in the car the differences were to have that speed difference.

“There’s still a lot of homework to do, from a fantastic position, clearly.”