All-nighter delivers title glory in Adelaide; SVG’s Supercars farewell flops: Hits and misses

After claiming its first ever drivers championship, the Erebus team went hard on Saturday night, staying out until the early hours of Sunday morning.

But when the mechanics wandered back to their hotels after 3:30am, it wasn’t after hitting the bars and dreading Sunday’s hangover.

It was after pulling an all-nighter to repair Will Brown’s wrecked Camaro after his first-lap exit from the weekend’s first race.

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Brodie Kostecki had won the drivers title, but the teams championship still hung in the balance.

Having embarked on what the team thinks is the biggest rebuild of the year-old Gen3 era, Erebus completed the double on Sunday, converting what had been a 161-point lead into its first teams championship, stamping its authority all over the series with a title double.

Sunday night would look markedly different to Saturday.

“A lot of alcohol,” Kostecki summarised.

Erebus is now cemented not so much as a rising force in Supercars but as the new bar. The Gen3 regulations were designed to put more power in the hands of individuals — mechanics, drivers and engineers — rather than have equipment dictate pace.

It hasn’t been the smoothest ride — just ask any of the Ford teams — but Erebus is the proof of concept that there’s hope in these new rules that a well-run team can mount the summit and beat the best.

HIT: NEW CHAMPION BRODIE KOSTECKI

The Australian Touring Car Championship has returned to Australian hands for the first time in six years, with Kostecki breaking more than half a decade of Kiwi domination perpetuated by Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen.

Quite aside from the parochialism of the achievement, a new champion is always good news in motor racing — in fact it’s the lifeblood of any sport.

And the way the 26-year-old won it counts.

His sixth and eighth-place finishes from pole in Adelaide can be forgiven as one of those last-round quirks in the context of how he executed his season.

This was no victory by default, as if with a dominant car and a compliant teammate. This was a genuine four-way battle, with mid-year changes in the championship lead and no driver enjoying long stretches of domination. It took almost six months for any driver to sting three consecutive wins together. Unsurprisingly it was Kostecki who managed it.

It counts too that he defeated Van Gisbergen in what boiled down to a straight fight with the reigning champion in the last two months, even if his points margin was practically unassailable by the time they arrived in Adelaide.

He didn’t just reach the pinnacle of the sport; he ascended the Supercars throne having defeated the incumbent to get there.

While a champion bowing out undefeated is always a romantic notion, there’s always the risk that subsequent winners are seen as somehow lesser for not having had to meet the established bar — MotoGP, as an example, is still grappling with the sudden end of the ‘alien’ era and Marc Márquez’s struggles with Honda.

But there’s no such risk to the Supercars.

In 2024 Kostecki will be the man. Undisputed.

HIT: NEW WINNER MATT PAYNE

For the second season in a row, a rookie has won the final race of the year in Adelaide.

Last year it was Broc Feeney, who used his Sunday victory to springboard into a title challenge this year, culminating in third on the championship table.

This year it was Matt Payne, who capped off a very strong round by mounting the top step for the first time.

It came off the back of two top-10 shootout appearances and a front-row start on Sunday, from where a superb launch got him into a lead that he would never effectively concede.

The 21-year-old Kiwi started his rookie season slowly at Grove — albeit the team has had a difficult start to life under the Gen3 rules, recording just seven top-10 appearances from its first 38 starts.

But things started to click around the start of the endurance season for team and driver.

David Reynolds — who finished second and third this weekend, taking six podiums for the season — won at the Gold Coast, proving that Grove had found its way again, undoubtedly helped by the parity tweaks to the Mustang.

Payne’s form improved markedly too. From his last nine starts he’s collected six top-10 finishes. His results have been particularly impressive at the two tricky street tracks that have ended the campaign.

And that’s perhaps the most impressive thing. Quite apart from the pressure of trying to win your first race, it’s never easy to triumph around a track like Adelaide.

But on Sunday Payne was faultless, amassing a commanding 8.548-second victory over 2022 winner Feeney.

With Richie Stanaway joining him at Grove next season after a long period on the sidelines, Payne has a chance to establish himself as a team leader — and a Supercars frontrunner and rising star.

HIT: EREBUS LONG-TERM GAMBLE PAYS OFF

In its 11th year of operation Erebus Motorsport has claimed the title double, bettering its previous best result of fifth in the drivers championship and fourth on the teams table, both won in 2018. It’s quite the step.

The team’s short history is tumultuous. Its early years under the then new ‘car of the future’ regulations as a Mercedes customer in 2013 delivered only mixed results despite having purchased the championship-winning Stone Brothers Racing entry at the end of 2012.

It wasn’t until founder Betty Klimenko — the sport’s only female team owner — initiated a move to Melbourne and commissioned team principal Barry Ryan to reinvent the team at the end of the 2015 season that things really started to click.

And it was under Ryan that Erebus, growing in strength from its new Dandenong base, took its biggest gamble — and eventually earned its biggest rewards.

When Anton de Pasquale and David Reynolds both left the team at the end of 2020, Erebus drafted in Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki, both having been contracted as co-drivers in previous seasons.

Brown was a no-brainer as first choice as a multiple champion in his junior career.

Kostecki, however, was a harder sell. Though he was clearly a talented young gun, he didn’t have nearly the glittering backstory — and his induction would mean fielding two rookies when the team should have been consolidating.

History proved the call to be correct, with the driver line-up sealing the teams championship and Kostecki taking individual honours.

It’s a big tick for Erebus’s driver gamble — and for Klimenko’s determination to see through the Erebus project.

MISS: SHANE VAN GISBERGEN’S FAREWELL

Adelaide served up a typically excellent event, with even the wet weather lingering in the area largely staying away from the circuit after a wet Thursday practice session.

It ensured the weekend saw healthy crowds in the parklands, creating a heady atmosphere for the title decider — and for Shane van Gisbergen’s last dance in the Supercars series.

But the good vibes weren’t enough to give the Kiwi ace the send-off he deserved. In fact the Adelaide 500 delivered him his worst weekend in more than a decade.

The 2022 defending champion arrived needing something akin to a miracle to haul himself back into the fight. A double victory was the minimum requirement, with bad luck then needing to befall Kostecki in both races to see momentum swing his way.

Instead he got two DNFs. Cruelly his failure to finish on Saturday came on the very first lap, instantly deciding the championship so long as Kostecki finished the race anywhere in the order.

Ironically it was a crash with his Triple Eight replacement, Will Brown, that ended his championship hopes.

Sunday lasted longer at least, but it brought no more joy, with a technical retirement ending his weekend early.

In a perverse way it was fitting. Having spent much of the year struggling to adapt to his often unreliable Gen3 car, his final practice sessions were coloured by steering problems — long running in the 97 machine — that left him on the back foot in qualifying and in the danger zone for both races.

If the car was a factor in his decision to leave the Antipodes for the United States, it will have been only reinforced by his final weekend in the sport.

But Van Gisbergen deserved more than this. Not the championship of course — no-one deserves silverware just for being good — but given his career defined an entire Supercars era, it warranted a better send-off than a couple of early showers.

At a minimum he deserved to be able to fight out his longshot title hopes on the track.

Such is the cruelty of sport.

At least the door remains ajar for a one-day comeback to right the wrongs of the 2023 Adelaide 500.