Photo: Supercars

Brodie Kostecki reclaims top spot with Sydney success

By

Brodie Kostecki emerged on top of the pile in the opening Supercars race of the weekend in Sydney to reclaim his place as championship leader.

Kostecki had gone into the weekend sitting second in the standings to Erebus team-mate Will Brown but emerged from qualifying for the first night race of the Gen3 era in second place on the grid – directly ahead of Brown – as Andre Heimgartner grabbed pole for BJR.

Heimgartner’s bid for victory over before it even began when he was slow away from the line and quickly dropped down the order, leaving Kostecki out front ahead of a fast-starting Brown and the Ford of Cam Waters.

Kostecki was able to extend his lead before making his first mandatory stop of the race and continued to run at the front leading up to the second round of stops – which coincided with a safety car called out after David Reynolds.

With the field diving in, Kostecki retained the lead of the race ahead of Waters – who had managed to jump ahead of Brown through the first round of stops – and was never troubled when the action got back underway as he wrapped up a relatively straightforward race win.

Behind however, things went wrong for Waters as he was slapped with a five-second time penalty for an unsafe release in front of the Triple Eight car of Broc Feeney, which led to an expletive-laden rant from the Tickford driver on his team radio.

Despite the penalty, Waters fought hard to retain his on-track position, which allowed Chaz Mostert and Shane van Gisbergen to close in behind.

With three laps to go, Mostert managed to get three-wide with the squabbling pair ahead to move into second spot, with Brown coming under pressure from van Gisbergen for fourth on the road.

Van Gisbergen briefly got ahead only to then run wide and allow Brown back ahead, with things coming to a head on the final lap when van Gisbergen got ahead after contact between the pair.

The end result of that was a five second penalty for van Gisbergen, meaning Brown was moved up into third spot ahead of Jack Le Broq, with Waters dropping down to fifth as a result of his penalty.

Tim Slade was classified in sixth ahead of van Gisbergen, with Bryce Fullwood, Mark Winterbottom and Scott Pye rounding out the top ten.

Pole man Heimgartner could only finish back in 14th spot, with Reynolds the only non-finisher.