Brodie Kostecki has rewarded Dick Johnson Racing with a dominant win in the third and final Supercars race on the streets of Townsville, in far north Queensland.
Kostecki may have been shaded in qualifying, when fellow Ford Mustang driver Cam Waters (Tickford) took pole and led away at the start. But Kostecki got on the move quickly, taking second place from a fast-starting Ryan Wood (Walkinshaw TWG Toyota GR Supra) before peeling off the track and making an early first pitstop.
When Kostecki resumed he built his win around a 32-lap middle stint, in which his tyre management was elite, pulling a lead of as much at eight seconds lead from the opposition – some of whom were on fresher rubber during the middle of the race.
By the flag the 2023 champion was 9.34s clear of the rest of the field.
After the win Kostecki was glowing about the speed of his car, in spite of tapping a concrete wall during a celebratory burnout.
“It has had this potential the whole weekend, but we did not get it right,” the Australian said after the 17th race win of his career.
“The car had the pace in it and we had options. We stopped early but the car would have just carried it through. A really cool feeling to win on a Sunday.
“I didn’t feel like I was pushing too much, I stayed in the same rhythm over and over. We’ll celebrate this one for sure.”
Grove Racing’s Matt Payne did a good job managing his tyres in his final stint, though his cause was aided by Waters losing speed after his second stop. Apart from a longer-than-expected wait in the pitlane, Waters’s Tickford crew did not get a full load of fuel in, prompting Waters to go into serious fuel saving mode as soon as he returned to the track in fourth place, which he improved to third.
“We were making sure we brought the beast back,” Payne said after his 13th podium finish for the season.
“We started third and I got a bad start, but more points for us, a solid day. I really need to focus on it [the start] for the next race.”
Waters admitted that the black Mustang finished the race with very little fuel left.
“I reckon it would be zero,” he said. “We didn’t get the fuel in the car, which was the shame. The car was really fast except for that fuel thing, but it is what it is.
“Yesterday in the race we did not make the gains we should have, but today the car was a lot better in the race. A good weekend."
Any notions of a Ford top-five sweep were dispelled by the WTWG Supras. In his 200th Supercars race, Chaz Mostert drove a strong opening stint from sixth on the grid and took fourth, while Wood was two places further back, though both of them were among the drivers to face some fuel-saving over the closing laps of the race.
Broc Feeney was the better of the Triple Eight Ford drivers. He was stronger in qualifying than Will Brown, starting from seventh, and he settled in at the back of the lead pack in the opening stint. He managed to get ahead of the second Grove Racing Ford of Kai Allen, whose race was compromised by a slow second stop, during which his left-front wheel was not secured before the car dropped. In the circumstances the team did well to redress the problem without a penalty, but after a delay of around five seconds.
The other Triple Eight Ford of Will Brown was eighth, starting a disastrous 19th on the grid after failing to advance from the first of two qualifying sessions before the Top 10 Shoot Out. The silver lining on Brown’s qualifying cloud was that he has multiple sets of fresh tyres for the race (which would have contributed to his 29 passes for position over the weekend's three races) but the team’s single-lap pace would be cause for concern.
Jack Le Brocq’s historically impressive form in Townsville saw him take honours in the ‘Camaro Cup’, driving his Matt Stone Racing Chevrolet to ninth ahead of the similar car of Jayden Ojeda (PremiAir Racing).
As a result of his podium Payne stretches his championship lead to 92 over Feeney. Kostecki is third, 187 points back, ahead of Waters and Allen. Anton De Pasquale, who drove to the mid-pack after being turned around on the opening lap, is sixth.
The next round of the Supercars Championship will be in Western Australia, at Wanneroo Raceway near Perth, on 31 July-2 August.
