Supercars great Mark Skaife on Triple Eight’s tough balancing act in title fight
Defending champions Triple Eight face the ultimate balancing act of battling for this year’s title while ominous switch looms on the horizon. Legend Mark Skaife breaks down the biggest Supercars talking points.
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Supercars great Mark Skaife has warned Triple Eight about the challenge it faces fighting for the 2025 championship while it prepares for its switch to Ford next year as he tipped rival star Cam Waters as the man to beat for this season’s crown.
The powerhouse squad sent shockwaves through Supercars when it announced in January it was leaving Chevrolet to race with the Blue Oval from 2026.
Triple Eight, which won the drivers’ championship with Will Brown and the teams’ title last year, has spent the past 15 years as part of the General Motors family racing Holdens before transitioning to the Camaro for the start of the Gen3 era.
Ford’s plan is for Triple Eight to take on homologation team duties for the Blue Oval during this season to get a jumpstart on preparations for 2026, although this is yet to be confirmed.
It would leave the Red Bull squad chasing the title in a Chevrolet while it worked in the background for its big switch to Ford.
Triple Eight is expected to be in the thick of the fight for the 2025 crown again with Brown leading the series ahead of this weekend’s round in Taupo, New Zealand, while his teammate Broc Feeney sits third in the standings.
Skaife said finding the balance between trying to win the championship now while having one eye on next season amid a manufacturer switch was “very hard”.
“If you think about when they changed from Ford to Holden (in 2010), they came out and won the first race meeting, so Triple Eight has a history of being able to do remarkable engineering things,” Skaife said.
“But having said that, you can’t put a big ‘S’ under your shirt and all of a sudden decide that you can do everything.
“When you are trying to win the championship in a Chevrolet Camaro today and you know that in February of next year that you are going to be trying to win a championship in a Mustang, there is a huge amount of work that goes on in the background.
“The ability to be able to harness that in a way that does not have an effect on your program right now is very hard, it’s as tough as it gets.
“I remember when we were racing Nissan GTR’s and we knew we had to race a Commodore the next year and we were off in our own separate test program doing all these things with Commodore whilst we were finishing off the year with the Nissan GTRs.
“I absolutely know when you are changing manufacturers how hard that is and it is certainly a program that is going to be very difficult to handle both as well as they would like.”
Walkinshaw Andretti United also has a juggling act as the homologation team for Toyota ahead of the brand’s entry into Supercars in 2026.
CAM’S CHAMPIONSHIP
While defending champion Brown sits atop the drivers’ championship standings, Skaife has backed Waters as the man to beat for this year’s crown.
The Tickford Racing star made a blistering start to the season with a clean sweep of the opening round at Sydney Motorsport Park as he underlined his qualifying strength.
While Waters’ usually hot one-lap pace was uncharacteristically off the boil in the second round at Albert Park, the Ford star produced two impressive charges from his lowly grid positions to recover crucial points.
Waters lost his championship lead to Brown, but sits just seven points behind in second place in the standings.
But Skaife said Waters would be his tip if he had to back a title winner now.
“I think Cam Waters can win it,” Skaife said.
“The pace he shows and his qualifying performances – I don’t want to make it a qualifying championship – but qualifying does add a lot of places, especially when we get right into the finals at places that are hard to pass in the business end of the season.
“If you are at the pointy end, it just makes it so much easier and his qualifying performances will really serve him well as the year goes on.
“His performances at Sydney Motorsport Park were unbelievable.
“It’s a bit of a mystery for me as to why he wasn’t, in terms of qualifying, quite as strong at the AGP because it didn’t make any sense to me.
“They would have done a lot of post-race debriefing and analysis to work out why that is the case, but his march forward in the races was still really good.
“If I had to put my money on someone now, I would put my money on Cam Waters.”
Skaife said Waters now had the perfect balance between his race craft and pace.
“He has got the raw pace that we have always been amazed by, but his race craft …. what he does at the moment is he comes through the field really well, his overtaking is strong, he doesn’t put himself in precarious positions, he parks the car in the right spot,” Skaife said.
“So his race craft coincides with his pace and that’s the key mix in car racing.”
FEENEY FIGHT
Skaife said Feeney was unlucky not to be sitting higher in the championship standings after a rollercoaster start to 2025.
Feeney has qualified no worse than second across the opening two rounds, but has just the one win to his name in the first race at Albert Park.
He sits 49 points behind Brown in third place, but Skaife said he should be sitting higher.
“I don’t think where Broc Feeney is in the championship really reflects at all where he should be,” Skaife said.
“That sounds like a silly summation, but he’s third in the championship and if you take his troubles this year – he had the left-hand puncture at Sydney Motorsport Park, then he had a crossed wheel nut in a pit stop, then the drama at the end of the race with Waters.
“Then in the Sunday race at Sydney Motorsport Park he got turned by Cooper Murray and he lost third to (Chaz) Mostert late in the race.
“Then in Race 8 he was on pole for the wet weather cancellation (at Albert Park), he wasn’t very happy about that.
“He is currently 49 points behind Brown and I have just done a rough map of what I reckon he has lost and he has lost and he has lost around 90 points. I’m not saying you’re going to get all those 90 points … but Feeney hasn’t had the run he would have liked.
“With a little bit more luck and a few things going his way, would have been far further towards the front.”
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