Broc Feeney scored victory in the third race of the Queensland Raceway Supercars weekend and with it, took an unlikely Sprint Cup title.
Feeney started from second of the grid alongside Triple Eight driver Will Brown and for most of the opening lap the two Ford Mustangs ran side-by-side, until Feeney seized track position and built a lead of around a second.
By the time the opening pit stop cycle beckoned, he had stretched that lead to three seconds over Brown, and just kept driving away from the field.
While Feeney looked like a winner for all of the race, the Sprint Cup title – and with it, automatic seeding into Supercars 10-man Finals – looked to be safely in the hands of Matt Payne. He settled his Kelly Racing Ford into fifth place and was seemingly cruising to the crown. But just after mid-race, the engine in his car soured – he pitted immediately but nothing could be done to return the New Zealander to the track.
With no real pressure from behind, Feeney drove steadily to the flag, winning his sixth race of the season (in his 150th Supercars race) by 1.45s.
“Dad has been telling me all week that it was not over,” he said after winning the Sprint Cup for the second year in a row.
“Huge condolences to Grove and Matty, they probably deserved this. You have to be there at the end. This thing was a rocket, it has been an up and down year, and I am lost for words.
“Yesterday we did not have a fast car and we moved through. [Today] we had a fast race car. We just wanted to win a race; I wanted to win that race more than winning the Sprint Cup, to be honest.”
Photo by: Edge Photographics
In second place came Brodie Kostecki. The Dick Johnson Racing Ford settled into fourth place in the opening stint, and then he picked off the cars of Kai Allen (Grove Racing Ford) and Brown in the second stint. After his second stop, Kostecki closed to within 0.6s of Feeney but in the final laps he faced issues with traffic and bent steering that put him in conservation mode.
“Unfortunately I was racing cars that were a lap down,” he said.
I was fast behind Broc. Sometimes you are on the right end of the stick, and sometimes on the wrong end. Broc had an edge of two or three laps on tyres.
“We have had some strong race cars in the last couple of rounds, but we have taken a step backwards in qualifying.”
On the back of a joyously celebrated pole position, Brown took third. If his race speed did not quite reflect what he showed in qualifying, his strategy was largely to cover what Allen did, making both his stop a lap later than the youngster and retaining track position. The gap between them at the end was 2.3s.
“If you told me this weekend was going to go the way it did, I wouldn’t have believed you. I am back to being disappointed to finish third.”
Behind Allen, James Golding did his Finals hopes the world of good with fifth place in the Blanchard Racing Ford, ahead of the best of the Chevrolets. Anton De Pasquale started 11th in the Team 18 Camaro and steadily moved forward, on a day when only one car derailed what would have been an historic Ford sweep of the top 10 positions in qualifying.
The driver that upset a return to the glory days of the Ford Sierra RS500 was Chaz Mostert. On the first weekend that the Toyota Supra teams had use of the new ‘B’ spec motor, the reigning Champion started fifth in the Walkinshaw TWG entry and was solidly in the top six, until his engine let go on lap 25.
As a result of the win, Feeney takes back the championship points lead, 30 points clear of Payne, with Kostecki moving up to third.
The next round of the Supercars Championship will be the first endurance race of the season, over 500 kilometres at The Bend in South Australia, on 11-13 September.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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