Whincup hails ‘risk-taking’ on future Supercars stars

Whincup won seven championships and four Bathurst 1000s during 16 years of full-time driving at Triple Eight Race Engineering, which will next year field its youngest driver line-up by far.

Its Red Bull Ampol Camaros will be driven by Broc Feeney and Will Brown, who will start the 2024 season aged 21 and 25 years, respectively.

Feeney was barely 20 years of age when he broke through for his first Repco Supercars Championship race win on the final day of the 2022 season at the Vailo Adelaide 500.

Now, a driver just 15 days older, namely Grove Racing’s Matt Payne, has also opened his account in the corresponding race of the 2023 season.

The Penrite Mustang pilot achieved that feat a day after 26-year-old Brodie Kostecki clinched his maiden championship title, the Erebus Motorsport driver dethroning 34-year-old Shane van Gisbergen, who has now moved to the United States to pursue a career in NASCAR.

“I thought it’s a bit of a bit of changing of the guard with Matty up there with Broc,” said Whincup after Feeney finished second to Payne in the 28th and final race of 2023.

“All the good drivers win their first race at the Adelaide 500; don’t worry about that, that’s where it starts,” he quipped, having done so himself in 2006.

“As Steve said, let’s promote the young guys; it’s a good thing.

“We’ve done everything we can at Commission land to encourage teams to take risks and invest in the next, young generation, the next new talent.

“We’ve certainly done that, it’s great to see other teams doing it, and it’s done a good thing.”

Triple Eight thrust Feeney into the hotseat that is the #88 entry as Whincup’s replacement, and they combined to win the Sandown 500 on the Queenslander’s way to third in the championship in just his second full-time campaign in the top tier.

While that call-up seemed a calculated risk from the outside looking in, Feeney was more so a known quantity than Payne was when he was plucked from relative obscurity and put on a fast-track to Grove Racing’s Supercars Championship effort.

The ‘Steve’ to which Whincup referred is team owner Stephen Grove, a successful gentleman racer himself, who has called on Supercars to ensure that the new breed become household names.

“We’ve got new young guys coming through and I think the real hurdle for Supercars is to make sure that we start to grow those brands,” said Grove.

“We [need to] start to grow them outside of the sport. I mean, it’s really, really important for our sport so, hopefully, Supercars will grab hold of that and really start to market these guys.”

Meanwhile, Scott Pye has called for better marketing of drivers broadly, as opposed to cars and manufacturer rivalries.

Supercars this year broke the record for the youngest podium in championship history when Feeney beat then-Erebus steerer Brown and Kostecki to the chequered flag in Race 9 on April 30, when the trio averaged an age of 23 years and 234 days old.

Next February, Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Ryan Wood will be 20 years old when he arrives at Mount Panorama for his first event in the top tier, while fellow Super2 graduate Aaron Love will be not quite 22 when he embarks on his rookie season with the Blanchard Racing Team.