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The revelation came during the latest issue of the Polarizer podcast during a discussion between Dane and Paul Morris regarding the blooding of new talent.
Dane was explaining the difficulty of pitching young, unknown talent to team sponsors, during which he admitted that Triple Eight’s lead sponsor initially rejected the idea of promoting Broc Feeney as Whincup’s replacement.
That prompted him to reveal that, well before Feeney was signed, Dane had unsuccessfully targeted Brown as a signing, knowing Whincup would eventually step back from full-time driving.
“I understand the pressures on a team owner,” said Dane.
“The sponsor maybe wants the [assurance] of a known person, somebody to de-risk it a bit. But the team is looking further down the line, saying hang on, we’ve got to be thinking about what this looks like in two, three, four years’ time.
“Certainly with Broc Feeney, when I first went to Red Bull Australia with the proposition of developing him with Super2 with Red Bull, they turned me down. And then I convinced them otherwise.
“So you’ve got to work pretty hard at it to create the potential situation for them to develop.
“I believed in Broc and a lot of what I believed in Broc was because Paul [Morris] believed in Broc and had seen them together operating in different cars. But also his demeanour, his work effort, a whole series of different things.
“So you say okay, I’d like to give this guy a go. It’s not a sure thing, ever. You’re taking a risk. But I saw it as the way to go, whether it was with Broc or somebody else.
“I actually offered Will Brown a deal in 2018 as a development driver for Triple Eight thinking he’d develop and be in a position to take Jamie’s place when Jamie retired, whenever that was going to be back in those days.”
When pressed on whether Brown had turned him down, Dane said: “Will Brown did, he turned me down! But it all came good in the end, so happy days.”
Brown ended up signing a long-term deal with Erebus that saw him promoted to the main game with the team in 2021.
He stayed there until the end of last season when he moved to T8 alongside Feeney.
For more watch the full episode of Polarizer above or listen via the podcast links below.
