Supercars champ fires up over ‘career-ending’ blunder
Former Supercars champion Will Brown has declared it’s “do or die” for his 2026 campaign after it was revealed an undersized engine part had been costing him up to 1.5 tenths of a second per lap all season.
After another disappointing weekend in Perth, Brown’s Triple Eight team committed to switching him to a new chassis for this weekend’s meeting in Ipswich in a bid to improve his performance.
Will Brown at the most recent Supercars race meeting in Perth. Daniel Kalisz
In making the transition, the team discovered a Supercars-issued air restrictor fitted to the engine as part of parity measures was found to be 1mm undersized. It meant less air was going into the engine, which reduced power.
Speaking on Fox Sports’ Motor Racing 360 on Wednesday night, Brown said he was “pretty angry” his season had been so heavily compromised by an issue out of his control, and with the problem solved it was now “do or die”.
He also suggested he was fortunate as a former champion to have enough credit in the bank for his team to support his assessment that the issue was within the car and not with him.
“I try and be a very positive person … that was my biggest thing, just trying to find some positive outcomes from it and not dwell too much on what the last eight months has been because to be honest, it has been tough,” he said.
“I’m probably in a fortunate situation in my career that I’ve won a championship and am quite cemented in the championship, but if this was to happen to a rookie or Zach Bates, Rylan Gray – someone like that that’s trying to find their feet – it could be career-ending.
“The hard part … is that not only the team side but from fans and people inside the industry, you are very much judged on your performance in our sport, and that’s every sport, and you’ve got to do a good job.”
Triple Eight said it received the part from Supercars during pre-season testing, and had assumed it was a compliant part. Supercars said it had loaned the part for the team’s pre-season launch only because the race-spec restrictors had not yet been delivered.
Brown, who won the 2024 championship with Triple Eight, sits a relatively lowly seventh in the standings. Teammate Broc Feeney is second – a massive 467 points clear of Brown with five race wins.
Brown is yet to claim a race victory in 2026, and has finished on the podium only twice. Despite the handicap, he did manage to score a pole position for the final race at the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne in March.
The race meeting at Queensland Raceway is the final race of Supercars’ sprint championship, before the series heads into the endurance events at The Bend and Bathurst.
Supercars has two 120km races on Saturday before a 200km battle on Sunday.
