Broc Feeney's second-placed Triple Eight Racing Camaro slows to a crawl inside final 25 laps of Bathurst 1000

With just 30 laps to go in Sunday's endurance classic Triple Eight Race Engineering were primed for a 1-2 finish, with Shane van Gisbergen maintaining a steady four second gap over Feeney.

That's when a shifting issue plagued Feeney's Camaro at an awful time, and he began to drift back through the field as he crawled down Conrod Straight.

Feeney could be seen curled up in his seat and gripping his helmet in devastation as his car sat in the Red Bull Racing garage.

Feeney's co-driver Jamie Whincup had spent his first stint leading the race, following his great start from second on the grid, but could only watch on in disappointment as his chances of a fifth Bathurst 1000 victory faded.

"It's such a hard race to win and an easy race to lose," Whincup said.

"One small issue and your day is done. Seems like a similar thing to what [the] #888 [car] had, with the tower for the gearstick becoming unstuck and we can't get any gears in there.

"It's disappointing. Broc had done a fantastic job."

Feeney and Whincup had been among a three-car battle with van Gisbergen and the #99 Erebus Motorsport entry of Brodie Kostecki and David Russell throughout much of the second half of the race.

It was suspected to be an identical issue to the one that struck Craig Lowndes earlier in the day in the team's wilcard entry, where the base of the shifting mechanism had malfunctioned.

The duo were aiming to complete an endurance double this year after they recently took out the most recent Supercars Championship round at Sandown.