TRIPLE Eight Race Engineering is set to roll the dice today in search of salvaging something from its lacklustre Darwin Triple Crown weekend to date.
The Brisbane squad has been outpaced by three of its four Ford counterparts at Hidden Valley, with Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters, Dick Johnson Racing’s Brodie Kostecki and the Grove Racing pair of Kai Allen and Matt Payne stealing the show.
Grove has already knocked Triple Eight off top spot in the teams’ championship.
Will Brown has collected a pair of fifths, while 14th and seventh for Broc Feeney has seen the latter’s lead in the drivers’ championship trimmed to 39 points.
Interestingly, Triple Eight customer Blanchard Racing Team has also experienced a tough time of it, at least by their 2026 standards.
“We’ve just got no pace,” said Triple Eight managing director Jamie Whincup.
Broc Feeney has unusually been off the pace. Pic: Ross Gibb
“It’s a common saying in motorsport: the best strategy is to have a fast race car, and we just purely haven’t had the quickest race cars.
“So we’re hurting. There’s no worse feeling than just not having enough pace to be able to win the races.
“The team have done a great job of maximising what we’ve got, but we’ve got a bit of straight-line stuff to work on and of course getting through the corners.
“If you can get through the corner 1km/h quicker, you look like a bit of a hero down the straight. So plenty of work to do.
“I think we’re going to have a bit of a swing (for Sunday), we can’t just tune here, there or anywhere, we have got to have a bit of a crack at least on one car to see if we can make a gain.”
Qualifying and a Top 10 Shootout will set the grid for the 70-lap Sunday race, which will get underway from 2:40pm local (3:10pm AEST).