Will Brown heads historic Erebus one-two

Will Brown secured his first Supercars victory since 2021 in the second race of the weekend in Perth, with Brodie Kostecki following him home to give Erebus Motorsport a one-two finish.

It marked the first time that the team – which had earlier failed with a protest against Shane van Gisbergen for the move that gave him the win in Saturday’s opening race – had secured the top two places in a race, and maintained a strong start to the Gen3 era that sees Kostecki leading the way in the early season standings.

Brown had qualified on pole for the race and held on to the lead on the run to turn one ahead of fellow front-row starter David Reynolds, but when he then left the door open open towards the end of the opening lap, Kostecki saw his chance to move ahead and grabbed second spot.

Anton De Pasquale would attempt a similar move a lap later but forced Reynolds off across the gravel, dropping the Grove Motorsport man down outside the top ten and copping a time penalty that would ultimately leave him to finish the race well down the order.

That contact put James Courtney up into third sport ahead of Chaz Mostert, Will Davison and Matt Payne, with Kostecki the first of the leading trio to pit, followed by Courtney and then Brown.

However, the differing strategies wouldn’t impact on the fight at the front, with Brown resuming at the head of the pack and going on to secure the win by a relatively comfortable margin of six seconds; his first victory in more than 40 races.

Kostecki followed him home to extend his lead in the points with Courtney in a lonely third spot as the leading Ford runner and Mostert rebounding from a tough race one to grab fourth spot.

Having qualified back in ninth spot, race one winner van Gisbergen managed to fight his way up to fifth after a late pass on Davison, with Todd Hazelwood, Cam Waters, Payne and Andre Heimgartner rounding out the top ten.