Bold headline moment at Turn 1 shocks the field as Kai Allen launches a daring outside pass on Broc Feeney, seizing the lead in a race driven by wet, slick-tire drama.
At the high-speed Turn 1 restart, rain began to fall and the front-runners were on slick tyres. In a split-second decision, the 20-year-old produced a remarkable outside maneuver to grab P1, drawing on recent experience from last year’s Sunday Sydney race when similar conditions gave him confidence to go for it.
“I had a great restart and put a lot of pressure on Broc. I had a good run on him and I knew he was going to block the inside,” Allen told the broadcast. “Because it was drizzling, I knew the Turn 1 line would be incredibly slippery based on last year’s wet scenario, so I tightened the seatbelts and trusted the grip. I was pretty comfortable. I knew I had it when I had a good run, slid into Turn 1, and found the gap on the outside where the surface still held grip.”
He credited Feeney’s clean racing and described it as a standout moment for the category: “It’s a credit to him; he could’ve pushed me off the track, but Broc, being Broc, delivered hard racing and put on a great show for the fans.”
The joy was short-lived for Allen, who handed back the lead by running wide at Turn 8 on the same lap—an error he says he’ll remember forever. It wasn’t to be, though, as the #26 Penrite Mustang later suffered a steering failure while sitting second to Feeney with eight laps to go. Team officials attributed the issue to side-to-side contact between the rival Ford drivers on the first lap, when Feeney held position at the front.
Feeney, the race winner, lauded Allen’s bold move and the broader racing in the category. “I’m not sure there’s a better door-to-door, hard-racing category in the world right now,” he said. “You see F1 drivers complain about passing, while we’ve got two young guys going wheel-to-wheel on slicks in the wet at Turn 1. That was a bold move by him and he pulled it off. We had fun banging doors—there were moments when I made a mistake and he got me, then I got him back, and then he had the issue.”
After round one, Allen sits 13th in the standings, while his teammate Matt Payne shares the lead with Feeney. Grove Racing sits second in the teams’ championship, nestled between fellow Ford squads Tickford Racing and Triple Eight.
