BROC Feeney has explained the competitor challenge of making the category’s “awesome” Track to Town parades happen.
Next week’s Townsville 500 will be the site of Supercars’ third full-field Track to Town, following Taupō in April and Darwin earlier this month – both of which were highly attended.
“I think it’s super cool about our sport that we can do this, because you think of many other motorsports, you don’t really drive a race car into town,” said Feeney, who won both races at the recent Darwin Triple Crown.
“I’m pretty excited to share it with the people of Townsville and hopefully get some more people interested. I suppose for me, it’s trying to interest young fans and get people from a young age that can support us drivers and teams as well.”
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On top of various logistical/planning hurdles handled outside of their control to make such activations possible, drivers and teams have to manage car factors such as engine overheating.
That in fact was an issue for Triple Eight at the Darwin Track to Town.
“To be honest for us drivers, all we’re worried about is our car not overheating – I actually had to stop in Darwin,” said Feeney.
“We just try to get there as quick as possible without getting in too much traffic.
“When we’re racing, we like our engines at about 80 degrees or something like that, but that’s at 200km/h with heaps of airflow.
“So when we cruise down the street at 60km/h, we obviously don’t have much. I think my team actually designed some fans and that to run the cars, it just helps it so we can do these activations.”
Fellow Chevrolet Supercars driver Bryce Fullwood, of Brad Jones Racing, noted that controlling speed of proceedings is another element outside of their control.
“What’s funny is we don’t even have a speedo in the car, so we actually don’t know how fast we’re going!” he said.
“But we have a police escort front and rear, so they set the pace.”
The Townsville Track to Town will unfold from 4:45pm AEST on Thursday, July 4.
