BROC Feeney’s tilt at this year’s Repco Supercars Championship has so far been a smashing success, with the Red Bull Ampol Camaro driver racking up 12 wins from the 24 completed races so far this season.
His 50% winning rate has helped him build a lead of 345 points over second place on the championship points table with a free pass into The Finals locked in by virtue of winning the Repco Sprint Cup.
However, this year’s new Finals system means there’s still the opportunity for some serious ‘snakes and ladders’ that could land him in a place in the record books that would have been almost unthinkable from his current position under the old ‘most points for the season is champion’ format.
It’s highly unlikely Feeney doesn’t add another win, or wins, to his victory tally for 2025 across the remaining five rounds so, should he trip up – or get tripped up – in the Finals and not manage to win the championship come the bp Adelaide Grand Final, he’ll take an unwanted place in history.
The record for most race wins for a driver in an Australian Touring Car/Supercars Championship season without winning that year’s title is 12, achieved by Mark Skaife for the Holden Racing Team in 1999.
Skaife, who finished third in that year’s championship behind teammate Craig Lowndes and Russell Ingall and won 36% of that year’s races, was bitten by a major loss of points at the Adelaide and Queensland 500 rounds that featured a heavier weighting of points than the regular sprint race rounds.
Skaife was able to get on top the following year of Lowndes to claim his first of three straight crowns for the HRT and on that occasion, it was Lowndes who did the majority of the winning without sealing the crown.
Lowndes won 10 of the 33 races in 2000 (30.3%), though multiple engine issues and a bad Darwin round consigned him to third in the final points behind Skaife and Garth Tander.
But neither driver can hold a torch to Skaife’s former Nissan teammate George Fury when it comes to the percentage of wins in a season without winning the crown.
The former school bus driver’s Skyline won 50% (five of 10) of the races in the 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship but still lost the title to Volvo’s Robbie Francevic.
The first year the championship was decided by a series of races rather than being determined by a single race – 1969 – saw Norm Beechey win two of the five rounds (40%) but not win the crown in his 327 Monaro.
He returned with his mega 350 GTS Monaro in 1970 to win three of the seven rounds to claim his second ATCC crown.
The Ryco Enduro Cup portion of the Repco Supercars Championship kicks off at The AirTouch 500 at The Bend at Shell V-Power Motorsport Park on September 12-14.