Will Brown says it’s “do or die” for his championship hopes after Triple Eight discovered a non-compliant part had been slowing down his car all season.
Triple Eight made the bombshell revelation that Brown’s Ford Mustang had been fitted with a too-small air restrictor in a strip-down of the car following another tough weekend for the 2024 champion in Perth.
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The team said it got the faulty part from Supercars during the pre-season assuming it was compliant with the regulations, whereas the sport’s organisers said it had loaned the restrictor to the team for demonstration events only.
The restrictor was found to be 1mm smaller than it should have been, which the team said has been costing Brown an average of 0.15s per lap.
The lack of car performance has been a major contributor to Brown’s underwhelming season, which sees him sitting seventh on the title table and 585 points off the lead ahead of the final round of the Sprint Cup in Ipswich this weekend.
Speaking to Fox Sports’ MotorRacing 360, Brown said that while he was relieved that a serious car flaw had been discovered, he was also “pretty angry” that so much of his campaign had been wasted in an underperforming car.
“It wasn’t an enjoyable couple of days, that’s for sure,” he said.
“It’s do or die for us right now.
“I try and be a very positive person … that was my biggest thing, just trying to find some positive outcomes from it and not dwell too much on what the last eight months has been, because to be honest, it has been tough.
“I’m probably in a fortunate situation in my career that I’ve won a championship and am quite cemented in the championship, but if this was to happen to a rookie or Zach Bates, Rylan Gray — someone like that that’s trying to find their feet — it could be career-ending.
“The hard part … is that — not only from the team side but fans and people inside the industry — you are very much judged on your performance in our sport, and that’s every sport, and you’ve got to do a good job.”
‘Cannot explain to you the devastation!’ | 01:28
Brown said it was particularly bitter to swallow given the work he did between seasons after failing to defend his first championship last year while teammate Broc Feeney dominated most of the campaign.
“I probably changed a lot of things over the off-season that needed to be changed and that people wanted me to change,” he said.
“I dug deep, did a lot of training, made sure I was down here [at the factory] more — I do a lot away from the track, so I stepped back from all that, the business side of things and everything, just to concentrate on a massive season.
“I’ve been putting in the effort and working 150 per cent to try and make sure that I was competitive this year. To now know that after all that, no matter how much I did or what I’ve done behind the scenes this year to make sure I did a better job, it was never going to be possible — that’s a very hard thing to take, to be honest.”
‘FIRE UNDERNEATH ME’
Brown revealed that his race engineer, Andrew Edwards, broke the news to him last Tuesday night.
“They probably delivered it to me the best they could,” he said. “We have a great relationship together and really enjoy working together.
“You just want to go into hiding and just do whatever you want — go on a holiday, have some beers, have a great time — but unfortunately we’re in motorsport; things don’t stop for these sorts of things.
“It’s disappointing, but I was still doing my appearances, still training, going to the gym, doing the things that I have to do to try and prepare for Ipswich.
“I would have loved to do many things over the last week and just get away from it all, but we’re right in the middle of our season.”
The discovery was made during the process of taking apart Brown’s car to rebuilt it around a new chassis in a bid to solve what at the time was an unknown problem affecting his competitiveness — a process Brown wasn’t convinced he wanted.
“To be honest, I questioned whether I wanted to go into the new car,” he said. “The old car was probably doing everything we wanted apart from that. It’s a bit of a risk stepping into the new car as well.
“We’re extremely lucky, because we’re already doing the car switch and we were going to switch that air intake over onto that car, so we would have had the same disadvantage if it wasn’t found during the time — very lucky that that’s happened.”
The discovery of the errant part and its rectification have put a new spotlight on Brown this weekend, with expectations the Toowoomba native will immediately take a big step forward in performance.
The 28-year-old, however, isn’t getting ahead of himself, particularly in light of Triple Eight’s ongoing struggles in its first season as the Ford homologation team.
“At the end of the day, all I’m turning up with is the same equipment and same opportunity as everyone else,” he said.
“There are some great drivers out there. Grove are beating us due to the job they’re doing and currently how well they’re rolling out early in the weekend and set-up-wise.
“I’m not going there thinking we’re just going to win straight away. Obviously I’ve dug deep, I’ve probably got a fire underneath me to come there and try and prove something to everyone, but at the end of the day I also need to be realistic.
“We’ve had a tough couple of rounds from a balance point of view and set-up as well. We’re finding our feet there and trying to build on that.
“We obviously found a 0.15s without doing anything, and you don’t get that very often in this sport — I hope there’s another 0.15s somewhere there like that!
“We’ve just got to roll with the punches and just prepare as best we can and just get back to normal racing.”
Who’s to blame over Brown car fiasco? | 01:24
Instead Brown is looking deeper into the season, when the finals format will neutralise much of his losses this season so long as he cements himself a place in the top 10 after the Bathurst 1000.
“It’s going to take a bit to build confidence,” he said. “People talk about it, but it is one of those things — you’ve got to build your confidence over time, and for us, that’s building back for Gold Coast [the first round of the finals].
“We want to have a great Bathurst, but we’re building back for Gold Coast and the finals to really hit it hard and jump out there and try and have a strong run home.
“We’re not counting ourselves out yet, that’s for sure.
“You just you just dig deep, you move on and you prepare for this weekend.
“I’m still seventh in the championship, still got a chance to win the championship.
“It’s disappointing, but you can’t change my last eight months and for anyone else either, so it is what it is.”
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