Are you ready to call it? Because it’s getting pretty difficult at this point to deny the reality staring at us in the face.
Erebus is the real deal, and Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki look ready to tackle the fight for the title.
We’re four rounds into this 12-round season and more than 30 per cent of the points on offer this campaign have already been awarded.
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Yes, it’s early. Yes, anything can happen. Yes, we’re still months away from the traditional watershed of the endurance rounds and Bathurst.
But atop the teams championship and with its drivers one and two on the individual title table, Erebus is mounting an irresistible argument for contention.
It’s not as if Erebus is walking this either. Triple Eight is quick and has an obviously competitive line-up. But Erebus has been more polished and is reaping the rewards.
That’s the story of the Tasmania SuperSprint — that Erebus can no longer be discounted or minimised.
The championship challenge is on.
HIT: EREBUS SETS THE PACE, WILL BROWN STRIKES BACK
Three pole positions, two race wins and the overall round victory add up to another sweet weekend for genuine title challengers Erebus.
Had it not been for Brodie Kostecki’s racing-incident crash at the start of the first race of the weekend, the team surely would’ve walked away from Tasmania with a full podiums weep — Kostecki’s frustrating 23rd-place finish was the only non-rostrum appearance of the entire round.
But even so, there’s no doubting that Erebus is the most consistently competitive team in the sport. Given the challenges of the regulation change this year, that warrants huge kudos.
It was a particularly big round for Will Brown, who snatched some momentum from Kostecki by claiming the team’s two top finishes. His first win, on Saturday, came from pole, while he overturned Kostecki’s P1 start late on Sunday to take final honours in dominant fashion — and with it the overall round win.
Kostecki now holds a slender 87-point lead over Brown and a 166-point lead over the rest of the field on the individual title table. Erebus has a healthy 276 points on Triple Eight, with Tickford 675 points off.
The only question now is how the team will manage what is threatening to be its runaway driver line-up. The pair battled cleanly all weekend, which must surely come as a relief to management, but with Triple Eight still close behind, private teammate duels tend only to worsen the overall result.
Broc Feeney jumping both for victory in the first Sunday race was a great example of what can happen when drivers cost themselves too much time fighting each other.
There’s no easy or even clear answer to that question, but it’ll have to be considered eventually if this brilliant pace continues.
MISS: SHANE VAN GISBERGEN
It’s been a long time since Shane van Gisbergen has had a weekend like this.
In fact it had been 987 days and 115 races since he failed to take a chequered flag, dating back all the way to Townsville in 2020.
That finishing streak came to a frustrating end this weekend in Symmons Plains on Sunday afternoon when a first-lap skirmish with David Reynolds sent the Triple Eight Camaro spearing into the barriers and out of the race.
It was declared a racing incident, with SVG forced to wear the risk for a passing attempt around the outside.
The car copped such a big hit to the front-right corner that he was concerned he wouldn’t get back out for the final race, though some quick work by Triple Eight to repair what’s proved to be a difficult-to-mend Gen3 car ensured he took to the grid, and he ended the weekend with a fourth-place finish, having been mugged for a place on the podium by Brodie Kostecki late.
But while the crash was significant, particularly to Van Gisbergen’s points haul, it doesn’t define his weekend. His general lack of pace does.
From qualifying he collected two ninths and an 11th. He was again covered comfortably by teammate Broc Feeney. And while he stood on the podium on Saturday afternoon, he was forced to admit he didn’t really deserve it on pure pace.
“I did nothing; [other drivers] took themselves out,” he said after rising six places from his starting position.
“I sort of had no speed, I just sort of wallowed around … we’ve been struggling a lot today.”
Even champions aren’t immune from dud rounds, and you’d be brave to attempt to read anything into it.
But that little glimpse of vulnerability will surely have been a boost to his young rivals in their quest to establish themselves as genuine challengers.
HIT: BROC FEENEY
For the second weekend this season Broc Feeney has been the on-track leader of the Triple Eight team, and with every passing round he looks more natural in the position.
If there’s been one weakness in his game this season, it’s qualifying consistency, and the 20-year-old appeared to take a big step forward on that front, taking a pair of sixths and a second for the weekend.
Had he not got caught up in an early tangle on Saturday that dumped him to 18th, there’s a good chance he would’ve ended the weekend with a sweep of podium places to complement his win and runner-up finishes on Sunday.
His race to victory was impressive for its composure. He was busted down from second to fourth off the line but bided his time from there for a well-executed overcut to snatch the effective lead after his pit stop. He took firm control of the race from there.
He almost managed likewise in the final race after rising to fourth in the opening stint, but Brown was better composed to control the gap and hold the Triple Eight driver in second.
Feeney’s now fifth in the standings just 19 points behind Van Gisbergen and 191 points off title leader Kostecki.
He has the equal most wins among the drivers this year, with three, and has won a race at every round bar Newcastle, this year being his first visit to the tricky street track in a Supercars machine.
The 20-year-old is growing in power every weekend, and Symmons Plains was just the latest sign of his frontrunning promise.
MISS: FORD
There have been 36 podium places so far this season. Ford has claimed just six of them. Despite making up 44 per cent of the grid, the Blue Oval is claiming just 16 per cent of the top prizes.
Tasmania was the nadir, with not a single Ford driver finishing in the top three all weekend.
The best result came from Cam Waters, who nabbed a pair of fourth places, though the Tickford racer’s time in Launceston will probably be better remembered for being deprived of a podium late on Saturday in a duel with Van Gisbergen.
His weekend was also characterised by not one but two collisions with Dick Johnson Racing drivers on Sunday, one apiece in each qualifying session, on both occasions bumping a DJR car out of the way at the final corner.
What was most interesting about both incidents was that neither Will Davison nor Anton de Pasquale seemed all that perturbed despite losing laps because of it.
Perhaps that’s because DJR was suffering another mare of a weekend, as borne out in their qualifying results: 16th and 22nd on Saturday, and seventh and 19th and then 17th and 24th on Sunday.
The Ford homologation team left Launceston with just two top-10 finishes.
Murmurs about parity continue in the background despite almost non-stop testing and tweaking to try to bring the two cars into ever closer balance, including transmission experiments run during practice this weekend.
In the first year of new rules it’s probably reasonable to expect the two cars aren’t absolutely exactly matched, but it’s also hard to believe any difference would be decisive.
Waters would’ve got close to pole this weekend had it not been for some poor car placement on his final runs, and he came close to snatching a podium too. He and Davison also shared the weekend’s three fastest laps.
Chaz Mostert is third in the standings behind only the Erebus teammates, while Tickford and WAU are third and fourth in the teams championship.
The Ford teams are well within their rights to explore parity issues if they believe there are problems to be sorted, but the Chevrolet teams can equally ask whether the Mustang operators are getting the best from their machinery and making the most of their chances.