Broc Feeney has had to grow up fast in the Supercars spotlight.
The unassuming Gold Coast native made what was billed as the most highly anticipated Supercars debut since Craig Lowndes last year. While he was never likely to repeat Lowndes’s superlative maiden-campaign feats, he turned in a solid and assured rookie season in the main game that ended with an excellent first victory at the Adelaide 500.
The progress was clear, and at Triple Eight, the undisputed benchmark team of recent years, and alongside Shane van Gisbergen, the championship’s foremost driver, he had the luxury of learning from the best and at his own pace.
But that’s all changed this year.
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Gen3 has shaken up the form book and shattered old assumptions.
Van Gisbergen is yet to put the season in the early stranglehold we saw in the last two years. Triple Eight is no longer the form team.
Erebus is rising. Banyo is the hunter, not the hunted.
Feeney is out of time to learn the ropes.
But he’s risen to the challenge spectacularly. In three rounds he’s picked up three podiums — four before he was disqualified in Newcastle through no fault of his own — including a couple of wins to sit fifth in the standings.
It’s been so strong in fact that he’s been a match for Van Gisbergen in the last two rounds. Just 84 points separate them, 81 of which came from the first round of the year in Newcastle, a circuit Feeney had never tackled in a Supercars machine.
“It’s good,” he tells Fox Sports before quickly switching to modesty mode. “Obviously last year there were a lot of races, a lot of sessions, where [Van Gisbergen] was certainly setting the bar pretty high.
“I think it’s good and I think we need it this year to push the team forward. We definitely need two drivers bouncing off each other, and obviously driving these cars is quite difficult, so I suppose both of us go about our stuff a little bit differently and it works really well.
“I’m still obviously learning off him a lot, but I think we can both learn a couple of things off each other, and we really need to try some things to get more comfortable in the cars and keep improving as a team.”
It’s a notable change from last year, when Feeney was doing more learning and less lifting in his rookie year, and it’s something Van Gisbergen has acknowledged as a strength of the team and even a source of motivation for him this year.
“His way of thinking is not clouded by anything,” the reigning champion told Fox Sports at the Perth SuperSprint. “The way he does things is so different sometimes and he’s faster.
“So it’s cool to learn off him and help him as well to get better, and this year he’s been super-fast, so it’s helping us all together.”
THE KIDS ARE MORE THAN ALL RIGHT
It’s not just Feeney who’s made a step forward this year, with Erebus young guns Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown marking themselves out early as title contenders.
Kostecki has finished all bar one race off the podium this season — including two wins in Melbourne — to put himself atop the championship standings, while Brown’s healthy 613 points from his three podiums and win is a big enough haul to put Erebus ahead in the race for the teams title.
Is this the arrival of the next generation of Supercars stars?
“At all three rounds there have been different guys that have been competitive, but the standouts have been Erebus so far,” Feeney says. “They’re doing a great job. Brodie’s doing a really good job and the consistency’s been awesome.
“I think for us young guys coming in, we don’t have [the disadvantage of] 20 years of experience of driving these [Gen2] cars, because these new ones are pretty different. The feeling is definitely very different from the inside of the car.
“For sure I think coming in we don’t have as many habits that we’re used to in the old car.”
But there’s more to it than just the young guys being clean sheets of paper — in fact they’re following a path well worn by one of the greats.
“I think it’s also experience in different cars,” Feeney posits. “I know a lot of guys stick to the Supercars and focus on that for the season, but Shane’s been the biggest one in the last few years driving so many different cars — he’s doing rally at the moment.
“I’m doing GT racing, Will’s done TCR and has done so many junior categories and Brodie’s doing sprint cars and that.
“Driving different stuff maybe helps. I mean, it’s good to be behind the wheel all the time.”
THE MISSING INGREDIENT
A four-way battle between the rapidly establishing Erebus boys and the youth-experience combination at Triple Eight would be fascinating — not least because after three rounds it’s the customer team, not the homologation squad, that has the edge.
The new generation of car, particularly in this early stage of its life, is peaky and difficult to set up. Erebus appears to have opened a wider window of operation that’s led to great consistency, which in turn has generated more dependable results regardless of the conditions.
“That’s our goal, to be more consistent,” Feeney says. “And I think on our day we’ve certainly got the speed to do it.
“We’re probably not the benchmark at the moment, so we’re hunting, but we’re close.
“It’s just making it more user friendly. I think when we’re right, we’re super quick, but just sometimes we’re just missing that little bit … we just haven’t put all the pieces of the puzzle together.
“I think when we’re on it we are we are the guys to beat, but we just need to be on it more often.
“If we can improve the consistency and be competitive across the whole weekend, I think we can be right in the mix.”
You’d be brave to bet against Triple Eight reasserting itself too. It’s not as if it’s miles off to begin with in terms of pace, and the team is only 180 points off the lead. Had it not had its one-two finish disqualified in Newcastle, it would be 246 points ahead.
And Feeney owns much of Triple Eight’s strong position as he finds a more confident stride.
His win in Melbourne was impressive on a very tricky weekend, but his victory in Perth on Sunday evening was on another level. Pole, fastest lap, every lap led and a 6.9-second victory — things don’t get much sweeter.
It was comfortably the most comprehensive performance of his Supercars career — and it was a sign of what he’s capable of when he’s in perfect alignment with his car.
“I think things have been starting to click in the last few months,” he says. “I feel like when things do click we’re super competitive.
“If I can do what I did on that Sunday race, I feel like we’ll be right in this thing.
“So I’ve definitely got a bit more confidence, and I think that race 3 on the weekend was probably the biggest booster for me”
But that begs an important question.
If Feeney’s trajectory continues apace, and if Triple Eight rediscovers its consistency, the 20-year-old sophomore could end up on a title collision course with Van Gisbergen, the three-time champion, in what would be a battle for external as well as internal supremacy.
Forget the biggest-rookie-since-Lowndes forecast. Such a title challenge would blow that out of the water.
“I’d love to be in that position,” Feeney says. “Obviously I want to be in that position, and I want it to be between both of our cars at the team.
“That’s the goal of the team, to try and be one-two.
“I think on our day we’re very competitive, so if we can do that more often, I think we will be there at the end of the year.
“We’re way too far to think about that, but I would love to be in that position.”
IS SYMMONS PLAINS STILL A T8 STRONGHOLD?
We might get an early preview of that battle this weekend at the Tasmania SuperSprint.
Symmons Plains has been a Triple Eight fortress for years, with the team having won 16 of the last 20 races in Tasmania and 25 overall.
Seven of those wins belong to Van Gisbergen after he swept all three last year.
But it’s also a happy hunting ground for Feeney, who took his maiden Supercars podium at the Launceston track this time last year.
And it’s safe to say he’s made a fair few improvements to his game since then.
“Hopefully I have some success down in Tasmania so it doesn’t look like I’ve gone backwards!” he laughs.
“It was cool last year. When I think about it now I realise how good it actually was.
“At the time I was obviously pumped, but I was just a young kid hanging on.
“It feels weird how much I’ve learned in 12 months and the experience that I’ve had. When I think that — I’m still only 20 — I was a 19-year-old racing Supercars and got a podium pretty fresh in, it’s pretty awesome.
“So I’m looking forward to going back. I had fun there last year. I’m sure the weather’s going to be pretty bloody cold this year, but we’ll try and get some trophies like last year.”
But the all-new rules case some doubt on whether Triple Eight’s Tassie supremacy will continue. The team’s strength — boring though it is to say — is that it’s cars are always just fundamentally good around a circuit that rewards bread-and-butter car dynamics.
But Erebus is the car with the broadest operating window based on the first three races of this year.
If the Dandenong South squad can cause an upset this weekend, then you’d have to think it really is game on.
HOW CAN I WATCH IT?
The Tasmania SuperSprint is live and ad-break free on Kayo and Fox Sports.
Action gets underway on Saturday with dual practice sessions at 9am and 10:55am (AEST) before three-part qualifying at 12:55pm and a race at 3:50pm.
Sunday starts with a pair of qualifying sessions at 9:50am and 10:15 followed by races at 1:05pm and 3:50pm.
