True winner amid ‘redemption’ tale for the ages as cruel 194-race run ends — Bathurst Talking Pts

Brodie Kostecki lamented after last year’s Bathurst 1000 that mistakes and strategic missteps had prevented him from converting pole to victory.

There were no such flaws this year.

Kostecki was challenged once: off the line, with an imperfect start that gave Broc Feeney a sniff of the inside line.

After that?

Perfection.

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Stint after stint he and Todd Hazelwood massaged open the gap until it was almost 20 seconds halfway through the race.

Their only true challenge came on lap 132, when Matt Payne overcooked his approach into the Cutting and bit the concrete.

It triggered the first safety car of the race and reset an assiduously constructed gap to nothing.

Feeney was now on his tail, and an unconvincing restart ensured they were line astern up the mountain.

The Triple Eight star was chasing history of his own, last year having had an almost certain podium and a possible victory robbed from him by a late technical retirement.

The pace they set was ferocious, and together they gapped the field in a private battle for the sport’s most famous victory.

But success could go to only one of them.

Kostecki’s determination won out.

His head down, slowly, gradually but inexorably he put himself beyond reach. Hundredth by hundredth he re-established his lead until finally he reached the chequered flag with a slender but decisive 1.349-second advantage.

Redemption.

It’s the reigning champion’s first victory in more than a year, dating back to the Tailem Bend triple that underpinned his title last August.

It’s been almost as long since we’ve seen Kostecki at his best.

While his late start to this season has inevitably counted him out of the championship, his campaign prior to the enduro season hasn’t been stellar.

He had just four top-10 finishes before Sandown, only one of which was a podium — third on Sunday in Darwin.

But in the last three rounds and from Sandown in particular it was becoming clear he was rediscovering his mojo.

“We had some flashes of potential earlier in the season but never had the pace to match these [Triple Eight] guys,” he said. “We’ve found the balance [so that] I’m happy with the car again.”

In Bathurst the old Brodie was incontrovertible.

“It’s redemption for last year for sure,” he told Fox Sports. “It was such a surprise to get pole. The car was stellar the whole day.”

Despite defeat, Feeney was satisfied to have seen the chequered flag after last year’s disappointment.

“Obviously you want to win, so we’ve come up a bit short today, but as I said to the team, I certainly drove my heart out out there,” he said.

“I’m absolutely knackered — I haven’t driven so hard and so fast for so many laps.

“We didn’t make any mistakes today. We tried our hardest and we came up a bit short, but it was so fun racing these guys, the level that they’re at and that we had to drive to for the last 500 kays of the race — it was insane.

“The goal is still to stand on the top step here, but it’s great to stand on the podium and have a day where you feel like you’ve done all you could.”

For two years in a row Kostecki and Feeney have emerged as the fastest two drivers at the mountain.

The battle might reignite next year.

HAZELWOOD’S CO-DRIVER CALL VALIDATED

Hazelwood is a Supercars race winner at the 194th time of asking — and what a way to claim his first victory.

“I hate that stat, having the numerous rounds and starts with no win!” he said. “That was certainly burning at the back of my mind.”

The weight of expectation only enhances Hazelwood’s rise to Bathurst triumph as one of the sport’s feel-good stories.

Not only has he waited so long to mount the top step, but it’s come one season after losing his full-time drive after six seasons in the sport.

It’s hard to crack the Supercars and even harder to break back in once you’ve been axed, particularly with a rapidly rising new generation of racers occupying an increasing number of places.

But Hazelwood never stopped believing in his dream, and he sought out the most competitive co-drive he could find to keep himself in the game.

“I never doubted myself,” he said. “There are probably a few doubters out there, but that’s okay. We always get that.

“That was probably the big thing for me walking away from being full-time last year — a big motivation for me was to surround myself with good people that I knew I could win races with.

“I’d rather have a chance of winning two races a year as opposed to having 12 rounds of frustration, and I certainly feel like I’ve been able to validate that decision myself.”

It validates not just his decision to join Erebus but also the extent he and his family went to secure him his racing career.

“I’ve probably had a bit more of unique journey to the top step of the mountain than other people, but everyone’s got their own stories,” he said. “It’s certainly well documented that my family — in particular it’s my mum and my dad and my sister — we worked our backsides off in our junior category years, but everyone’s got that story for sure.”

Most famously his family made racing money running sausage sizzles outside hardware stores in South Australia.

“We cooked countless sausages,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of members over the years that have helped pitch in over the years, a lot of fans, sponsors — there are so many people, an endless amount of people, that I need to thank.

“To have my family here today is really special. If there was ever a way I could repay them — they mortgaged the house to get me kickstarted in Supercars, so to win the Great Race is probably a nice return.”

From having been on the outer, Hazelwood now owns a permanent part of Australian racing history.

WHERE WERE ALL THE SAFETY CARS?

The last 10 years of action at Mount Panorama have generated an average of six safety cars per race.

This year it took a remarkable 132 laps for the first and only safety car to make an appearance. Barely so much as a yellow flag slowed the pace over 161 laps beyond that three-lap intervention.

As a result this was the fastest running of the Bathurst 1000 in history, clocking in at 5 hours, 58 minutes and 3.065 seconds.

It was the first Great Race to come in under six hours. It was 3 minutes and 41.799 seconds faster than the previous benchmark set by Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards in 2018.

The lack of race intervention correlated directly with the astonishingly low attrition rate. Just one car retired — Payne’s Mustang after he crashed at the Cutting — for a finishing rate of 96.2 per cent.

But why was this race so cleanly run — especially when the build-up to Sunday had been dominated by carnage in almost every session?

There are some theories.

The first is that the spectre of wreckage hanging over Sunday dissuaded drivers from trying anything too risk. With just about every team suffering a crash or technical problem between Thursday and Saturday, the appetite for risk was lowered lest the mountain bite back hard.

The second is that forcing the primary drivers to start the race ensured that the gaps between cars when the co-drivers finally got the keys were big enough that there was little chance for the sorts of shenanigans that might have led to safety cars.

That said, the same applied at the Sandown 500, where the co-drivers still managed to cause most of the chaos, though the short nature of the track will have played a roll.

The third is that by Sunday it was clear that grip off the racing line was low. The combination of the hard tyre and the Mount Panorama surface yielded little adhesion with even relatively small deviations from the racing line, meaning drivers were tempted by fewer marginal overtaking chances than usual, thereby creating almost no instances of even light contact.

Somewhat quirky was that the safety car interruption passed without incident. One safety car often breeds more because of the effects of bunching and jumbling the field and by forcing teams off their strategies, forcing them to think on their feet and putting drivers out of their rhythm.

But this single safety car also conveniently coincided almost exactly with the last pit stop window. Everyone was able to change tyres and refuel and make it to the end without deviating from their planned strategies.

All those things combined for a rapid but ultimately very straightforward edition of the Bathurst 1000.

BROWN PUTS ONE HAND ON TITLE TROPHY

The Bathurst 1000 is always decisive in the championship. With so many points on the line for a single race and with so few rounds remaining to the finale, the result on Mount Panorama hangs heavy over the title fight.

He finished only third, but this was as good as a victory for Will Brown.

He started the round 189 points ahead of Chaz Mostert and 222 points ahead of Broc Feeney.

With Feeney finishing only one place ahead of him and Mostert languishing in fifth, he’s managed to extend his points lead.

Feeney has moved back into second but is 204 points adrift. Mostert has slipped back to 225 points off the lead.

Just 600 points remain across the closing rounds on the Gold Coast and in Adelaide.

It earns Brown a crucial DNF buffer. He can afford to cop a technical retirement from one of the last four rounds without losing top spot.

Even a failure to finish would do him only so much damage, with a trio of subsequent seconds still enough to grid out victory behind even a dominant Feeney.

“We said after Bathurst we’d start looking at the championship, so I’m sure it’ll play on the mind now, but I still want to win races,” Brown said. “We’ve got Gold Coast and Adelaide coming up, two great events; I don’t want to run around and just try to get points. That’s generally how you lose the championship.

“We’ll go out and race as hard as we can at those events and we’ll see what happens.

“We’ll just take things as it comes. That’s what we’ve done all year.

“We seem to be good at getting podiums but not wins, but that’s good.

“It’s a tough one. I haven’t been in this position in a Supercars champion, but in lower division I have been, and I think if you start thinking about championship and driving defensively, something generally goes wrong.”

Regardless of his strategy, it’s now Brown’s to lose.