'Cooked' Broc Feeney survives rain chaos, loose wheel, cool suit failure to claim second victory in Sydney

SYDNEY: Broc Feeney survived a failed cool suit, an overheating engine, and a chaotic restart to win the final Supercars race of the weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park.

As weather threatened the circuit in the middle laps, the Ford Mustang of James Golding lost its left-rear wheel in a shower of sparks on lap 29. The escapee then rolled across a grassed infield section and only narrowly avoided hitting other cars as it crossed the track.

The safety car was called, and as the cars circulated slowly, a storm that had been threatening the circuit hit.

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On the restart, with the lead cars all still on slick tyres on a greasy track, Kai Allen put on a stunning move for the lead Feeney around the outside of the ultra-fast turn one.

Later in the lap, Will Brown made contact with Brodie Kostecki, which pushed him into Saturday race winner Anton De Pasquale, who then hit Brown, and caused them both to spin off the track. Brown was slapped with a 15-second penalty.

Back at the front, Allen ran wide at the resurfaced turn eight hairpin, which allowed Feeney to re-take the lead, which he would hold until the end of the race to claim his second race victory of the year.

For Allen, it was all for nought when he suffered a left-front steering failure late in the race.

Feeney sounded exhausted on team radio on his way back to the pits after taking the chequered flag, and on his arrival in pitlane, he immediately sat down next to the car and poured a bottle of ice water over his head.

Cameras also captured him getting some attention from a medic.

The cool suit is in essence a shirt covered in plastic tubing, through which ice-cold water is pumped through it to keep the driver cool. While the system is brilliant when it works, it has the opposite effect when it fails. In a cabin in which temperatures regularly exceed 50C, the cool suit becomes not only an unnecessary extra layer of clothing, the water trapped in the tubing only gets warmer, further heating the driver.

Feeney told the broadcast the suit failure happened virtually immediately.

"It's pretty hard, in the first couple of laps, I was like 'man I'm getting heated'," he said.

"My body was getting hotter and the tubes were just warming my body. I was playing around with it, then we got the plastic bag in the front and the car was overheating as well."

He said he got some brief respite under safety car when he did the ever-reliable unplug and plug back in. Once the race resumed, his battle with Allen meant he was unable to jiggle with the suit.

"I worked hard for that one … sorry I'm so cooked," he said.

Earlier, Allen and Feeney banged door handles off the start, before the pole sitting Red Bull driver took the lead through turn two.

As his cool suit failed, his situation was complicated further when a plastic bag, believed to be a wrapper from a slab of water bottles - got stuck in the front grille of his Mustang, causing engine temperatures to skyrocket.

Moments after replays of the bags were shown, Feeney got on team radio alerting to the fact the temperatures were on the rise, and suggested he had seen the bag go into the front of the car. It forced him into an early pitstop.

Team boss Jamie Whincup later said the temperature reached 97C, "which is three degrees away from very bad".

Once he emerged from the pits, focus turned skyward as the threat of weather increased.

Storms had been forecast for Sunday afternoon for much of the week, and they formed north of the circuit virtually as the race started and began heading south.

They arrived as the field circulated under safety car for the Golding wheel, which left teams a massive strategy dilemma. All of the front runners elected to stay on slick tyres, with only a handful towards the back gambling on wets.

That proved to be the worst of the rain as the storm skated past the track to the south.

Reigning Bathurst 1000 champion Matt Payne finished second, and Cameron Waters made it an all-Mustang podium in third.

In an incredible turnaround of fortunes from Saturday, all five of the new Toyota Supras finished inside the top-10.

The Supercars season continues in a fortnight at the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne.