The Townsville 500 confirmed some things we already knew.
With Broc Feeney tightening his grip on the top of the championship table, the Triple Eight star is now almost certain to claim the inaugural Supercars Sprint Cup after the next race in Ipswich.
With his lead at 220 points, he’s also in a strong position to end the enduro season on top, taking maximum advantage into the first week of the final.
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But the finals will be a totally different proposition. With points reset among the top 10, form will be more important than sustained scoring over the season.
Now just about two-thirds of the way through the campaign, we’ve got our first glimpse at what the finals from guide might look like.
Despite some grumbling from some quarters, Townsville’s three-day, three-race format was an important dress rehearsal for the year’s most consequential race.
It’s an almost identical format to that set to be used in Adelaide, the season’s grand final.
The only difference will be the inclusion of a half-hour practice session late on Thursday afternoon. The weekends are otherwise practically identical.
Friday will feature one practice session followed by all-in qualifying and a short race, with Saturday and Sunday then comprising the usual qualifying-shootout-race scheduling as seen at the weekend.
Just as was the case in Townsville, it will be critically important for title-contending teams and drivers to roll out of the truck in a competitive configuration. There really is no time to lose.
Aside from the format, Townsville being the first true street circuit on the calendar has been billed as a crucial warm-up for the finals, when two of the three knockout tracks are set up on public roads.
Of the two finals street tracks, Townsville shares more similarities with Adelaide. Both are semi-street circuits, being run partly on regular public roads and partly through purpose-designed parklands — both combine close walls and chicanes with some faster corners.
Gold Coast is more of an outlier, the Surfers Paradise track essentially a series of straights joined by some 90-degree turns, a hairpin and its famous chicanes.
But a compliant car that can handle kerb riding and gives drivers confidence to sidle up to the barriers is key at both.
The weekend just gone, then, gives us a fascinating glimpse at the potential form guide for the most important three rounds of the season.
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WHO WON THE ROUND?
The weekend’s points tally gives us our first indication of who we should be looking out for on the finals street tracks.
Feeney won the round, but the order of scorers was jumbled compared to the championship table, hinting at a performance swing for the weekend.
In the below table and in all following driver statistics only those inside or within 150 points of the top 10 are included — that is, those in most realistic finals contention.
The following list is ranked by Townsville points. Actual championship position follows in brackets.
Townsville scorers
1. Broc Feeney: 273 points (1st)
2. Chaz Mostert: 252 points (5th)
3. Will Brown: 236 points (2nd)
4. Matt Payne: 235 points (3rd)
5. Anton de Pasquale: 209 points (7th)
6. Brodie Kostecki: 185 points (6th)
7. Cam Waters: 175 points (4th)
8. Ryan Wood: 164 points (10th)
9. Bryce Fullwood: 157 points (14th)
10. Jack Le Brocq: 129 points (15th)
11. Thomas Randle: 112 points (8th)
12. Andre Heimgartner: 112 points (9th)
13. Kai Allen: 105 points (12th)
15. Nick Percat: 102 points (13th)
19. Cameron Hill: 75 points (11th)
Feeney’s pair of weekend victories ensured he won the round despite an eighth place on Friday, when Triple Eight started on a false note.
Friday’s winner, Brodie Kostecki, faded considerably — to fifth on Saturday and 16th on Sunday — leaving him sixth overall.
But there are some key takeaways among the drivers between them.
The biggest is Chaz Mostert. He’s won just one race all year and has stood on the podium just only times. His average finishing position for the season is 8.4.
But a pair of podiums this weekend undersold his race pace. He was arguably the field’s fastest driver on Saturday, when a better grid place than 17th probably would have propelled him to victory.
Similarly, Will Brown could have won on Sunday — for what would have been just the second time this season — had he qualified better.
Though he made the shootout for the first time since Perth, he started six, five and six places respectively behind Feeney over the three races, leaving him with too much work to do. If he can sort qualifying, however, he can’t be discounted to defend his title.
Matt Payne is in strong form late in the Sprint Cup. He moved into second on the title table after Friday and Saturday’s races in Townsville, though fifth on Sunday dropped him back to third, albeit only 15 points behind Brown.
And Anton de Pasquale has emerged as something of a smoky. Despite enduring a fallow period spanning New Zealand, Tasmania and Perth, he’s made a pair of podium appearances since Darwin.
He’s the fourth highest scoring driver over the last two rounds and could be peaking at the right time on the right style of circuit.
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BUT WHO HAD THE PACE?
Street circuits — especially Gold Coast — put a premium on grid position, being narrower and making overtaking more difficult.
With the grid already so close, especially near the top of the field, one-lap pace could make or break a finals campaign.
For this metric we compare each driver’s average gap to pole for the season prior to Townsville with their average gap to pole at Reid Park to see whether it’s better or worse.
Top five improvers by average pace, drivers
1. Chaz Mostert: 0.303 seconds closer
2. Matt Payne: 0.243 seconds closer
3. Anton de Pasquale: 0.166 seconds closer
4. Bryce Fullwood: 0.163 seconds closer
5. Kai Allen: 0.083 seconds closer
Despite an up-and-down set of qualifying results — ninth, 17th and eighth — Mostert enjoyed the biggest gain based on his previous season-long qualifying average.
Payne also enjoyed a boost, up a quarter of a second, while De Pasquale had a smaller gain.
But it’s here wildcards Bryce Fullwood and Kai Allen could find some encouragement if they can make it to the knockout rounds.
Fullwood and Allen are 14th and 12th on the title table respectively, 132 points and 80 points outside the top 10.
For Fullwood in particular that looks like a big ask, but both he and Allen are in improving form. The BJR driver has five top-10 finishes from the last six starts, while Allen got a pair of breakthrough podiums in Darwin and has been in strong qualifying form since Perth.
Conversely, there were some interesting drivers who found themselves lapping slower at Townsville than they have all season.
Top five losers by average pace, drivers*
1. Nick Percat: 0.448 seconds more distant
2. Broc Feeney: 0.215 seconds more distant
3. Cam Waters: 0.200 seconds more distant
4. Andre Heimgartner: 0.169 seconds more distant
5. Cameron Hill: 0.120 seconds more distant
*Ryan Wood would have topped this list (0.715 seconds) because of his unrepresentative Saturday qualifying performance (2.59 seconds off pole). Excluding that number returns him to marginally better than average.
Nick Percat — 13th and 103 points off 10th place — was almost half a second slower on average. It left him outside the top 10 in all three races, though he gained 11 places during Sunday’s race.
Cam Waters is yet to rediscover the sort of form that had him dominate the Sydney opener. He hasn’t taken a pole since and has just four more front-row starts to his name, one of which came in Townsville. His average is dragged down by a mistake in Saturday qualifying, though his cleaner run on Sunday still had him off the pace.
Andre Heimgartner was a little off his usual qualifying pace though showed decent race pace.
Cameron Hill still led the way for Matt Stone Racing, but the team struggled for one-lap pace all weekend, which becomes its own story as finals time approaches.
Kostecki converts pole to race win | 00:53
WHICH TEAMS HAVE WORK TO DO?
There’s a delicate balance between a driver not hitting their usual highs and a team not finding the right set-up at any given track.
The fact Hill enjoyed a larger qualifying advantage over teammate Percat all weekend but that both he and the sister car were further from pole than usual suggests there’s work for MSR to contemplate should either driver make the finals.
For this metric we compare the average of each team’s best qualifying lap for the season up to Townsville with its average best qualifying lap at Reid Park to calculate whether it’s got closer or further away from pole position.
Biggest losers by average pace, teams
1. BJR (2): 0.329 seconds more distant
2. PremiAir: 0.291 seconds more distant
3. Triple Eight: 0.174 seconds more distant
4. MSR: 0.147 seconds more distant
5. Tickford: 0.067 seconds more distant
6. BJR (1): 0.002 seconds more distant
Neither PremiAir not BJR’s second garage played any major role in the big results this weekend.
Triple Eight’s average is weighed down by its wayward Friday, without which it still would have been in the ballpark with Tickford as a marginal loser by this metric.
But the fact the team struggled to anil its set-up on Friday isn’t beside the point, it is the point.
Given Adelaide will run with a similar schedule — with a shorter race on Friday before feature races on the weekend — those lost points could be costly on grand final weekend.
MSR was a little off its usual pace, while both Tickford and BJR’s first garage was thereabouts.
On the other hand, some key finals hopefuls made some important gains in Townsville.
Biggest improvers by average pace, teams
1. BRT: 0.545 seconds closer
2. Team 18: 0.217 seconds closer
3. Grove: 0.201 seconds closer
4. DJR: 0.109 seconds closer
5. Erebus: 0.078 seconds closer
6. WAU: 0.018 seconds closer
It’s good news for Grove in particular, which is hoping to get two cars into the knockout rounds.
DJR also enjoyed some significant bright spots, in particular with Kostecki’s pole, though Will Davison was a top-10 qualifier all weekend in his most comprehensive set of results since New Zealand.
WAU’s qualifying pace undersold its race pace all weekend, but even then it was marginally closer to the mark over a single lap.
Erebus’s slightly improved form is a boost for Jack Le Brocq, though he’ll need the enduros to go his way from 15th and 143 points off 10th spot.
Blanchard Racing Team enjoyed the biggest step forward among the teams, but neither of its drivers is in finals contention.
Of course no two street tracks are the same, and between now and the finals we still have one sprint round and a pair of enduros to run. Teams will have learnt much from Townsville, which will shift the landscape by the time the sport arrives at the Gold Coast and especially Adelaide.
But if Townsville is the starting point for knockout form, we could be in for a fascinating first finals series.