PHIL BRANAGAN
AUSTRALIAN SUPERCARS
MELBOURNE (AUS)
21-24 MARCH
ROUND 2/12
Triple Eight’s stranglehold on the victories in the 2024 Supercars Championship has come to an end – by the margin of less than one second, and in just one of the four races at Albert Park.
Will Brown and Broc Feeney split the wins in the two opening races at the Melbourne track and their Chevrolets finished 1-2 in the third when the two cars that had been fighting for the lead – both Fords – managed to run into each other. In Sunday’s final race, again the T8 Camaros trailed until – again – the two Fords fighting for the lead collided.
But this time around it was another Chevy that took the win. Nearly four years after his last series victory, Nick Percat took his first with his new team, Matt Stone Racing, and even the opposition seemed fairly pleased to see a nice guy finish first.
But if the Red Bull Camaros looked fairly speedy, so too were some of the Fords. The Mustang drivers who were fighting for the lead early in the Saturday race when they crashed out were Matt Payne (Grove Racing) and Cam Waters (Tickford), prompting a safety car, strong words between the pair and another Triple 8 1-2 result.
On Sunday, Payne’s repaired car was nerfed out of the lead by the Walkinshaw Andretti United Mustang of Chaz Mostert, who copped a time penalty (dropping
