Broc Feeney in car # 888 in Super2. Image: Ross Gibb
Triple Eight and Broc Feeney have yet to announce which number he will use for his rookie Repco Supercars championship season, which is the topic of this week’s Pirtek poll.
As Speedcafe.com reports, it remains to be decided which competition number the youngster will wear when he slips into the seat of seven-time champion Jamie Whincup for the 2022 campaign.
Unsurprisingly, Triple Eight Race Engineering has thought carefully about what numeric identifiers its cars will compete with in supercars.
Ironically, however, # 888 has become relatively rare since Craig Lowndes retired from full-time competition at the end of the 2018 season.
Since then, it’s been what former team boss Roland Dane called a “full-time vacation” and only reappears for enduro events.
Even that streak was set to end with the Repco Bathurst 1000 in 2021, when the car Whincup shared with Lowndes ran a full-time driver at # 88 based on the former at its own final event.
However, this prompted Shane van Gisbergen to park week # 97 and switch to # 888 in order to honor Dane as Triple Eight Boss at his last event.
Van Gisbergen has already confirmed that despite winning the 2021 championship this year, he will keep # 97, a repeat of his choice after his first such title in 2016.
It would therefore be appropriate for Feeney to start with either # 88 or # 888 to keep the theme going.
The question then would be which of the two should it be?
While van Gisbergen is pretty attached to # 97, there was a negative reaction from some fans to his Bathurst homage to Dane, believing that # 888 was Lowndes number.
The connection of the seven-time Bathurst 1000 winner to # 888 was, in contrast to van Gisbergen, at least originally a team identifier.
Also note that Dane planned to resume it after a “little distance” had passed since Lowndes’ retirement.
The wildcard entry for Supercheap Auto was Auto # 39
Additionally, # 888 is what Feeney used for his Dunlop Super2-series 2021 campaign with Triple Eight after years of second-tier riders choosing their own riders, and many took the change as an indication of what ultimately happened.
Regarding # 88, of course, one could argue that this is Whincup’s number now, even though he spent seven years at # 1, including four years winning the championship again.
However, the new Triple Eight boss was the only driver to use the # 88 since his first season in 2006 with the Banyo team, apart from enduros before 2010 and the 2013 season when it was used by then-customer Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport.
If not either number, the only obvious alternative for Feeney is # 93, which he has used in karting and then in the Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia 86 Series and a cameo in Aussie Racing Cars.
In his days when he drove a supercar, he otherwise has Paul Morris Motorsports (PMM) own # 67 in Super3, Tickford Racings # 5 in his Super2 campaign in 2020 and # 39 for the Supercheap Auto-supported Tilt wildcard at least in Bathurst 1000 used.
It was of course the number 39 that his co-driver Russell Ingall used in the Great Race in 2021 when “The Enforcer” drove a Supercheap Auto-supported Commodore at PMM for four years.
What number would you like to see Feeney race with in 2022? # 888, # 88, # 93 or something completely different?
Cast your vote in this week’s Pirtek poll.
