Triple Eight will put Will Brown in a different car for the Ipswich Super440 in a bid to end the slump that has left the 2024 champion 17 races without a podium and, in the view of Craig Lowndes, one weekend away from becoming his team-mate's support act.
Brown's Perth Super440 was the low point. Qualifying results of 12th, 12th and 19th came at the same meeting where Broc Feeney took a record-breaking pole and a race win, and the gap inside the Red Bull Ampol Racing garage stopped looking like variance.
The response is a full chassis swap. Brown will race 888A-070 at Queensland Raceway - the spare Ford Mustang that went to the United States for pre-season wind tunnel work, was shaken down by Jamie Whincup and later driven by Daniel Ricciardo at Calder Park in March. His current car, 888A-073, will be pulled apart and analysed.
"Will is one of the best drivers in the Supercars paddock, the 2024 series champion, and the #888 car's most recent results don't reflect how fast he is or how well we know he can race," said Triple Eight team principal Jamie Whincup.
"We're throwing the kitchen sink at it. Whatever it takes to getting the #888 where it needs to be ready to race at the front of the field - we'll leave no stone unturned.
"The team and everyone in this building are 1000 percent behind Will and his crew."
Brown's own diagnosis is blunt and specific: straight-line speed, an issue he traces back to Darwin in mid-June.
"To be honest, we're looking into it, don't know how much I'm meant to say on it, but I was 1.6 tenths down in qualifying on the Sunday to Broc, just on the straights," Brown said on his Lucky Dogs podcast.
"That was the difference, and Broc's not the fastest down the straight either. Broc's probably four hundredths off the Chevys. That means compared to our own car and the Chevys, I've got to drive two and a half tenths quicker pretty much to out-qualify them around a 50-second lap. We've been last in the speed traps over the last three rounds."
He was equally direct about what the results imply.
"At the end of the day, if Broc's qualifying on pole, I'm not a 19th driver," Brown said. "I've fought for the championship the last three years in a row, and I know my qualifying hasn't been as good, but struggling a lot on our side of the team which is really disappointing."
Lowndes, who spent 21 seasons racing for Triple Eight, used his column on the official Supercars website to put a deadline on it.
"He just isn't able to find the pace that Broc can. That was pretty evident when Will qualified 19th, and Broc got pole position," Lowndes wrote.
"So, should Triple Eight favour Broc? Well, I think Will's got one more round to prove his performance. Otherwise, the team should start focusing on Broc.
"We all knew Triple Eight was going to bounce back at some point, but they've only found a way for one half of the garage to do that. To claim they're totally back, I'd say that you need both cars fighting at the front."
The context is a season in which Triple Eight endured its longest run without silverware since 2006 through Darwin and Townsville before Feeney broke the drought in Perth. Feeney has won eight races in the time since Brown's last victory - five of them this year.
That last win came in race two at Ipswich in 2025. By the time the field lines up for race one on Saturday, August 22, it will have been a year and 13 days. Before then, Brown gets up to 10 laps in the #11 Objective Mustang at The Bend on Friday as part of Jackson Walls' rookie test day.
V8 Sleuth reported that team manager Mark Dutton had promised on Sunday night that Triple Eight would be "going to town" on the #888 entry. A different chassis is what that turned out to mean.
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*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/triple-eight-swaps-browns-chassis-as-lowndes-sets-a-deadline). Visit for full coverage.*