Who is racing the 2024 Supercars Finals?
By Thomas Miles
Date posted: 16 October 2024
The 2024 Supercars Championship will be the last determined traditionally before Finals arrive, but what happened if the new structure was introduced this year?
Not only did the Bathurst 1000 determine the winner of the Peter Brock Trophy in the biggest race of the year, it will also be the last chance to secure tickets to the Finals and remain in championship contention.
The current championship contenders of Will Brown, Broc Feeney, Chaz Mostert and Cameron Waters would of course carry on their season-long fight for the crown.
As he is currently with a 224-point advantage, Brown would enter the Finals as the number #1 seed.
The Triple Eight driver won the Sprint Cup after compiling the most points across the first eight rounds from the Bathurst 500 to Tasmania SuperSprint, being 81 clear of Mostert.
In addition to the Sprint Cup, Brown just added the Enduro Cup to his trophy cabinet alongside Scott Pye.
Victory at the Sandown 500 backed up by a third place at the Great Race was just enough to edge out his teammate Feeney and boss Jamie Whincup.
The #87 compiled 558 points across the two iconic enduros, just six more than Feeney and Whincup.
PremiAir’s James Golding further grew his momentum by snatching fifth in the championship from Matt Payne, who despite the DNF, was always safe of qualification, while Nick Percat was locked in seventh.
But it is further down the order things get interesting and if the finals were in play this year, Erebus Motorsport might had wondered what could have been despite the Great Race success.
Entering the enduros the heat would have been on to secure finals berths with just 203 points covering positions 8-12 in the standings after Symmons Plains.
Post Bathurst, that figure closed to only 135 points, meaning the squeeze would have been on.
Thomas Randle’s climb from 19th to 11th was enough to ensure he was safe in eighth in the championship.
There would also be a lot of relief in the Dick Johnson Racing garage.
Anton De Pasquale’s seventh place saw him move from being on the bubble in 10th to ninth in the standings.
However, the all-night repair on the #17 only became more paramount as Will Davison needed a strong finish to stay in the game.
If the car was ruled out of the weekend or Davison retired, Le Brocq’s ninth place would have been enough to snatch the critical 10th place in the championship.
But even if Davison finished 12th, Le Brocq was on track to give DJR a big fright.
The #9 sat fourth before the final round of stops during the solitary Safety Car where Erebus decided to leave it out to give pit priority to the winning Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood entry.
However, it would have been interesting to see if Erebus would have committed to such a move given it ended up costing Le Brocq and the team a shot at a Finals spot.
If Le Brocq and Jayden Ojeda had retained fourth, it could have challenged and passed Brown and Feeney off the restart to score enough points to overhaul Davison.
Only adding to the pain for Le Brocq and Erebus would have been the loss of a top four finish at Sandown where the #9 was spun by Payne and lost a further 150 points.
But due to dropping to eighth and Davison climbing four spots to 12th, the 10 drivers contending the opening round of the 2024 Supercars Finals would be the following.
Will Brown
Broc Feeney
Chaz Mostert
Cameron Waters
James Golding
Matt Payne
Nick Percat
Thomas Randle
Anton De Pasquale
Will Davison
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