Queensland Raceway produced some intriguing action over the weekend with Ford dominating proceedings and the crowning of a now two-time Repco Sprint Cup Winner in Broc Feeney (I have been crying internally since Sunday and as I’ve been writing this). We also had three Wildcard entries this weekend who were all where they were expected to be running across the weekend none performed any major shock results. Both fortunately and unfortunately for me I did not have to watch Feeney be crowned live as I was sim racing at Sim Racing Adelaide 😉 however, he does deserve it he’s a quality driver and despite not matching the same heights as last season, he’s still put together a consistent campaign. Moving on from the semi-shameless plug let’s get into the good.

The Good

Lucky Dogs Podcasters

Brodie and Will both had stellar weekends, starting with Will, he proved that his bumpy early season form was more down to his car than himself with a breakthrough victory in the second race of Saturday, a Sunday Pole position and kept himself on the podium for the entire weekend which is a great confidence booster heading into the Endros. Onto Brodie, he won this round while avoiding any team fuelling errors in the Sunday race and much the same as his podcasting brother, he kept himself on the podium all weekend and snagged a race win on Saturday. The Lucky Dogs Podcast heads into the Endro season with great confidence and some the best driver pairings of the grid they should be pleased with their weekends and should enjoy their podcasting more after this round. 

Rylan has Arrived 

Gray had his best weekend in DJR colours and of the season, made another Top Ten Shootout and posted finishes of 7^th and 8^th over the weekend with the first race on Saturday being the current magnum opus of his young career as he drove through engine issues to bring his car home in 7^th. After some media criticism from people in my kind of position he’s starting to show why he was so highly sought after heading into this season. As a quick aside I may have very well been spelling Rylan’s first name wrong for like half a season whoops.  

Feeney

He’s gone two for two in Sprint Cup wins, he was ultra consistent this weekend and has been over the course of this season, a deserving Sprint Cup winner there isn’t much more to say about this guy in all honesty. When you win something of this magnitude your race weekend is always gonna be good. 

The Bad

Maccas Nightmare Fuel 

Macauly Jones had another weekend to forget only managing 18^th as his best result which makes for grim reading within the team. This kind of form and performance cannot be justified as he isn’t a young driver learning the ropes anymore, he needs to be producing greater results particularly with the Super 2 talent currently around both within the BJR staple and outside to even begin to justify his full-time seat.

Another Walkinshaw Engine Bites the Dust

Walkinshaw’s reliability issues reared its ugly head once again this week as they just cannot seem to get their Toyota engines to work consistently, this time it’s cost Chaz Mostert and turns the weekend in Ipswich into mediocrity for the team as they struggled to perform outside of the reigning Supercars champion to begin with. Disregarding the engine failure on Sunday there was a struggle to find consistent pace within both cars in the garage as Wood was qualifying poorly and Mostert didn’t manage to move forward from his qualifying position in either Saturday Race. 

The Ugly 

Maximum Payne

An engine failure cost Payne a first Sprint Cup win and turned a solid if unspectacular weekend into a horror story however, it isn’t all doom and gloom as he heads into the Endro season only 30 points behind Feeney in the standings that could easily swing right back into his favour heading into Finals winning the Sprint Cup isn’t the be all end all of the season there is still much to play for. 

Erebus 

Their form as a team is improving slightly but considering they were legitimately at rock bottom they couldn’t get any worse. Cooper Murray showed promise this weekend with some strong qualifying however, he couldn’t capitalise on it fully as he often found himself going backwards and having some struggles in getting through battle packs. Jobe Stewart had some of his best qualifying results this weekend looking much improved in this format however, he wasn’t ever close to cracking the Top Ten but there are some encouraging signs coming out of this weekend relatively speaking.  

With the Sprint Cup Season over I’ll do a “mid-season” review of each driver (yes I know I’m late to the party but I think the end of the Sprint Cup is a cleaner mid-season break) before the category heads off to the Endros starting in The Bend which is being held on the second weekend of September and will hopefully be more action packed than last year. 

It’s been a while between drinks for me, so writing a weekend review again feels odd to say the least. Hidden Valley Raceway produced some on track action although most of the intrigue for this weekends racing was in team strategy and pitstops. The undercut proved to be extremely powerful for the weekend races as well as an elongated overcut on the Friday Sprint Race. The Friday afternoon sprint race produced the most chaotic racing of the weekend as drivers usually forget the art of setting up overtakes with Saturday and Sunday races being won within the strategy and pitstops. Sunday did have two super subs stepping in to race with mixed fortunes with Hazlewood showing why he’s still the best co-driver around currently and Winterbottom getting some valuable mileage with the enduros getting ever closer. 

Good 

Penrite Power

Penrite Racing had fast cars all weekend long and capitalised to nearly full effect taking a race win on Saturday, a double podium on Friday and another podium plus top 10 result on Sunday. This weekend sees Penrite head into Townsville with the Teams Championship lead and the all-important pit lane priority. Payne maximised his speed advantage this weekend to bring the championship lead down to 15 points being within the Top 4 all weekend long and Allen picked up his second career win along with a strong overall weekend showing. 

Waters Resurgence 

Waters finally broke multiple droughts for himself and the Tickford team this weekend being able to secure two pole positions, a win and another two trips to the podium for the round resulting in a Triple Crown win for himself. This Darwin trip makes good of Waters season form and places him in good stead heading into the closing stages of the Sprint Cup allowing him an outside chance to win it being that he’s now just under 200 points from Feeney in the lead. As Waters himself said after Friday this will be a weight off his shoulders and hopefully for the sake of Tickford is a sign of things to come and not a flash in the pan. 

Bad 

Erebus Again Again 

It’s very difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel for Erebus at this moment in time as Murray so far hasn’t taken the leap that I personally expected to see this year and Stewart is still in his rookie season. Erebus may have to pray for some enduro madness to achieve a result worth celebrating instead of any small wins they may get this season with their drivers or package. Their cars same to BRT did look very good so it does deserve some praise and admiration. 

BRT 

BRT had no race nor qualifying pace this weekend and struggled significantly to make their way through the field which shows as a team they still have quite a bit of growing to do despite their improved performances this season. Cameron will need to develop his race craft further if he wants his results to improve as this weekend highlighted some of his deficiencies both defensive driving and making passes on other drivers. Their cars did look really good though for the Darwin trip so kudos where it’s due.     

Ugly 

Feeney 

Feeney had a pretty average weekend by his lofty standards, he was well off the pace for the majority of the weekend and was probably somewhat fortunate to not lose the championship lead at the conclusion of this weekend. His lead has been reduced from 90 Points to only 15 Points going into Townsville, he cannot afford another weekend similar to Darwin going forward if he wants to retain the championship lead especially considering Paynes current form. 

Cool Suit/Drink Problems

This issue rears its ugly head again this year and at one of the worst possible tracks for this to happen to with Kostecki and Randle facing issues with their Drinks and Cool Suits respectively which directly and possibly indirectly led to both drivers’ omissions from Sunday. Supercars will want to get even tighter on the rules surround cool suit/drink failures before we see a driver suffer a serious health problem from that type of failure. 

Walkinshaw 

Multiple mechanical failures this weekend costing Wood and Mostert in the Saturday and Sunday races respectively hindered their weekend further which was already mired with overall mediocrity despite a good Saturday recovery drive from Mostert. Walkinshaw will want to remove these gremlins before they cost them a chance at silverware like it did at Bathurst last year and has cost them earlier in the season at Christchurch.  

Before concluding I did want to mention De Pasquale’s Sunday win, this ends the wait for the Chevy brand although is leading into a trend of De Pasquale or bust for the manufacturer. Another thing to quickly mention is how good all the cars looked in their indigenous/mauri designs for this weekend I absolutely love these one-off liveries although my bank account doesn’t when the models get released. Supercars heads over to Townsville from the 10^th to 12^th of July with only three more rounds left in the Sprint Cup before Enduros. 

The start of the New Zealand double header has been odd and I’m not really sure whether I can dub this weekend as the Taupo Super 440 given Race 10 got postponed. This has left me with a limited amount of Supercars action to comment on, majority of the drivers had either a mixed bag weekend or nothing burger weekend to sum up this article in a sentence if you don’t want to go and read it. Taupo as per, provided some good quality racing across a heavily shortened weekend, but the weather killed the true potential unfortunately.  

The Good 

The Will Brown 

He’s remembered how to qualify, and he has left his destructive Melbourne form behind him. Will Brown showed this weekend that when he qualifies well, he tends to maximise his position with good results, he took out a 2^nd and 4^th from this weekend and benefitted from being able to focus on the podium places rather than carving up the field either figuratively or literally. Brown can take great confidence out of this weekend and heading into the uncharted territory of Christchurch, this is confidence which will be sorely needed.  

Terrific Toyota Taupo Special

Toyota have their first win in the Supercars category and who better to deliver it than Ryan Wood on home turf, given Wood’s mechanical misfortune from last year this will be a beyond pleasing result and the perfect place to deliver. Walkinshaw showed that their partnership with Toyota will be a fruitful one for both parties given how quickly they’ve been able to propel themselves to 2^nd in the Constructors Championship. Another bonus from this weekend is Toyota now have two marquee drivers for their outfit in Mostert and now Wood particularly significant given GM’s struggles in this category, it bodes well for Toyota going forward that this won’t be a massive problem. The only real downside for Toyota is getting BJR going in a positive direction as they are currently struggling beyond belief outside of Heimgartner. 

Supercars

Supercars deserve props for how they’ve handled this situation. They were decisive and forthcoming with their decision making in regard to this weekend with Tropical Cyclone Vaianu coming into the path of the Taupo track. Supercars made the correct choice, it was in the best interest of both the teams and fans safety to cancel Sunday’s proceedings as they very easily could’ve just chosen the alternative cause money go brrrrr. 

I also want to again gush over the commentary it was fantastic this weekend and Richard Craill looks to be another successful addition for the Supercars broadcast. 

The Bad

Randle 

Randle unlike many of his other competitors hasn’t really suffered from too much bad luck, he’s just performed poorly that’s it, particularly this weekend. Only good thing for him this weekend was his livery change otherwise he was very poor both in qualifying and race which sums up his season well to this point in time. Randle has not looked even close to claiming a podium let alone a victory, hell he’s struggled to get top 10 results so far, he will want to change this form ASAP before the outside noise gets too loud.  

Cameron 

Aaron Cameron had another week to forget, he was a bit unfortunate in Race 8 with the contact and being spun around which ruined his race before it could ever get going. However, Race 9 he was just off the pace and couldn’t really move himself through the pack which is another learning experience for both him and the team. The BRT cars definitely have the pace, which was proven by Goulding this weekend, Cameron just couldn’t put together a solid outing. Fortunately, in Cameron’s case he is still quite young into his Supercars career and under considerably less pressure especially compared to other drivers currently in the category. 

The Ugly 

Taupo’s Tropical Cyclone

As mentioned earlier in the article Tropical Cyclone Vaianu ruined the weekend by existing and my article so it’s a double whammy for me since I only do round reviews instead of race by race. Fortunately, we were at least able to get two days of action so in the grand scheme of things it was very limited damage to the season. It also makes the debut of Christchurch to Supercars to be a massive one since Race 10 is being moved to next week which will make it a great weekend. On a serious note, hopefully the potential damage it may cause is minimal to the area and that those already effected by it recover from the damages quickly. 

Erebus Motorsport 

Another race week another bout of depression for Erebus, again had a car caught up in an accident they had no ability to avoid and again had very little race pace. Both drivers are having major early season struggles in Jobe Stewart this was expected, in Cooper Murray for me at least it was not. Erebus may be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come but going off the first three rounds, they and their fans will have to go through a massive amount of pain first before they get to the good times. 

GM

GM have had a torrid time as a manufacturer this weekend, could only scrape the edges of the top 10 in both Race 8 and 9, with their cars being unable to mount a serious challenge for podium places. GM are screaming for a strong contending team and at the moment have to settle for teams that are still building into something greater. 

Next weekend should be a great one given we’re getting a bonus Friday race to debut Christchurch which is very exciting and Supercars can take some positive momentum into this double header. 

Ryan Wood will head into Christchurch with a 17 Point lead in the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy over Broc Feeney.