Opinion: How a second half showdown looms between Ford and Chev

OPINION: Pre-season, the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship had been tipped to be wide open, and after a thrilling Townsville round, it is set to get even better.

This week's Panasonic Air Conditioning Sydney SuperNight might come before the big Olympics break, but it is officially the start of the second half of the championship season.

Some feared there would be a repeat of the parity dramas that plagued the 2023 season, with Camaros leading the way for the balance of last year.

A pre-season trip to the United States to conduct wind tunnel testing has delivered aerodynamic parity, with another Stateside trip underway to put the engines under the microscope.

That created a clean slate for 2024, and with Shane van Gisbergen off to NASCAR and Brodie Kostecki sitting out the first two rounds, it was all to play for.

Triple Eight, though, did Triple Eight things and won six of the first eight races, sprinting out to sizeable leads in both championships. After Will Brown and Broc Feeney gapped the field in the New Zealand finale, it seemed we were in for a two-horse race.

However, the last few rounds have reinvigorated the 2024 season and with it perhaps, a championship battle could be fought between two different marques for the first time since 2018.

The Townsville finale was the 14th race of the year, and Matt Payne's victory meant he had become the seventh different driver — from six different teams — to win in the last nine races.

At the same point in 2023, Erebus Motorsport and Triple Eight had won 13 of the 17 races, and held the top four positions in the drivers’ championship. Ford star Chaz Mostert was the next best, but was winless and 243 points behind. Cam Waters was seventh, 309 points down.

After six rounds in 2024, Triple Eight is still the team to beat on the ladderboard, but Mostert is 174 points behind in third, with Waters fourth, albeit 389 points back. However, the aforementioned Ford drivers dominated in Townsville, and unlike most of 2023, they have belief they have a car to win.

It gives increased hope that the 2024 season will not turn out to be another procession. Rather, with seven different winners in the last nine races, 2024 could become seriously close come the climax of the season in Adelaide.

So, what has changed? Well, Triple Eight burst out of the blocks with five straight wins, but on a number of occasions now, pit lane's best team has shown signs of weakness.

Before too long, the team will have to seriously manage the championship expectations of Brown and Feeney, with the margin just 78 points with 1820 still left to win. Brown's crash in Townsville proved no driver and no team, as perfect as it seems, can stay out of trouble forever.

There's no doubt we have not seen the true nature of the power struggle at Triple Eight just yet, and if the margin gets smaller, the problem may present itself.

That could be music to the ears of the likes of Mostert and Waters, who if they can remain at the front of the field like they were in Townsville, could keep piling on scoreboard pressure. Payne is another joker in the pack, and if either of them keep getting wins, Triple Eight may need to reassess and try and scrape a championship home.

However, this is Triple Eight we're talking about. It's a juggernaut that leaves no stone unturned, and Brown has already cast fighting words into the ring heading to Sydney.

With Payne's somewhat surprising win in Townsville, though, there is clear and legitimate competition for wins. A year ago, even Anton De Pasquale's Townsville victory carried noise over a fresher tyre bank.

Darwin aside, the continued improvement from Walkinshaw Andretti United has thrust Mostert into genuine title contention. This is Chaz's 11th season in Supercars, and after six rounds, he has never been as close to the championship lead. Remarkably, his previous closest effort after six rounds was last year, while he was 282 points down in 2015. That year, his world turned upside down in an horrific Bathurst crash. When you consider Mostert lost 99 points with the loose wheel in New Zealand (138 for second versus 39 for 22nd), and battled through the field twice after Super Soft qualifying wobbles in Darwin, that 174-point deficit to Brown doesn't look big at all.

Another team that has turned a corner is Tickford Racing, which downsized to two cars in 2024. After two terrible opening rounds for the #6, Waters has scored the second most points since New Zealand, behind only Brown. Tickford genuinely look to be heading in the right direction for the first time in a long time, with Thomas Randle just about to break into the top six in the championship.

Also in the first six rounds, Nick Percat won a race for Matt Stone Racing, Andre Heimgartner and Brad Jones Racing won in New Zealand, James Golding claimed a pole for PremiAir Nulon Racing, Mark Winterbottom has multiple podiums in a season for the first time since 2017, and De Pasquale was a shock Jason Richards Memorial Winner in Taupō. In a scary thought, the most successful Ford team of the last decade, the Shell V-Power Racing Team, have yet to fire a serious shot in 2024. Then, Jack Le Brocq went out and plonked his car on pole in Townsville.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, is reigning champion Kostecki has one top 10 in seven starts since his comeback. If Erebus gets on top of his car troubles, Kostecki could seriously threaten the top guys.

The Gen3 cars are proving tricky to handle for teams, and strengths and weaknesses of the two cars have emerged over the last three rounds. Given the tiny margins, it will come down to the best teams and drivers on the day, with David Reynolds saying in the Drivers Only podcast: "They're super sensitive and there's heaps of variation in them, so everyone can get lost engineering-wise... you can have a car that does things a lot different to the bloke you're racing, but you achieve the same lap time. It's quite cool."

It all bodes well for the second half of the season as the recent form guide means we have a grid often separated by tiny margins in qualifying, with races taking crazy turns.It was also in Sydney last year where a number of silly season shocks emerged, and this year, we've still yet to find out who is racing where in 2025.

We're six rounds down, and there are six to go, with 10 races to win. Two are worth 300 points for the winner, with one of them a little race named Bathurst...

Sydney action will commence on Friday, with 200km races to be held on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are on sale now. International viewers can follow all the action on Superview.