How last-lap heartbreak turned the Bathurst 1000 on its head

Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood gave Ford and Dick Johnson Racing a Bathurst 1000 win in a race filled with drama, controversy, heartbreak and, ultimately, redemption.

After dominating the middle part of the race the pair and their Mustang overcame a pitlane error to take the lead on the last lap and speed away to what looked like an unlikely – no, impossible – win.

Their win came after a race run at a record speed, in hot conditions, which generated a myriad of brake and tyre problems for many teams, and which for 156 of its 161 laps featured zero safety car interventions.

DJR appeared to remove themselves from contention with a delayed late-race pitstop, when a precautionary front disc rotor change went wrong and dropped what had been the leading car fifth. As a result Kostecki found himself chasing down Will Brown (Triple Eight Ford) and Anton De Pasquale, whose co-driver Lee Holdsworth had helped keep the Team 18 Chevrolet towards the front of the field and away from the problems that afflicted much of the opposition.

De Pasquale himself was chasing Zach Bates, whose fairytale dominance of qualifying was widely predicted to fade during the race as his minnow Matt Stone Racing Chevrolet was overwhelmed by Supercars’ supposedly better teams. But MSR stuck to its task; in just his eighth Supercars start co-driver Aaron Seton won the start, held off Hazelwood (who was making his 200th start) and drove superbly in his stints. Bates made zero errors worthy of the description and second-generation team owner Stone and his small squad refused to wilt in the heat of battle.

Problem was, Bates needed a longer final fuel fill than did De Pasquale and everyone knew it. ‘ADP’ claimed the lead after the final round of pitstops – but he had a problem. Team 18 had calculated its fuel number incorrectly, so the car returned to the track without enough fuel to get to the chequered flag – unless the safety car finally appeared.

Even with a late safety car, it wasn't enough for De Pasquale to conserve fuel to reach the finish

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz/ Getty Images

It did, when Chaz Mostert, chasing a top 10 finish in the Walkinshaw TWG Toyota Supra he was sharing with Fabian Coulthard, ploughed into the same Forrests Elbow barrier that had claimed team-mate Ryan Wood in Friday practice. Officials cleared the subsequent mess with admirable haste, and now a three-lap dash would decide the race. On tyres fresher than the cars in front of him Kostecki went on the charge, getting by Brown and Bates, to emerge in clean air behind De Pasquale. At the start of the final lap the Chevrolet had what looked like a winning 1.7s lead.

But as the cars turned up Mountain Straight what had outwardly looked like confident faces in the Team 18 pit finally gave the game away. The Camaro coughed, then spluttered, then slowed and Kostecki blasted past to give DJR an unexpected win.

“We we’re f***** already – we knew we were,” Team 18 team principal Adrian Burgess said post-race. “We were trying to manage it when that [the safety car] came. Obviously we thought, ‘Great, here we go, this is going to help’. But we sort of realised it probably wasn’t help enough.

Third went to Bates and Seton, a stunning result somewhat muted by the realisation that, given their pre-safety car track position, its intervention cost them what was almost certainly going to be a win

“If it’d gone one more lap longer, we probably would have gotten home.”

Ironically, Burgess was in charge of the DJR team when James Courtney won the team the 2010 V8 Supercars title, for team co-owners Johnson and Charlie Schwerkolt – who departed at the end of that year to set up Team 18...

Brown and co-driver Scott Pye took second place for Ford, on a day when Triple Eight did not quite have the speed to challenge Kostecki. Third went to Bates and Seton, a stunning result somewhat muted by the realisation that, given their pre-safety car track position, its intervention cost them what was almost certainly going to be a win.

A surprise pole was the highlight as Bates and Seton defied expectations to remain in the victory hunt in the closing laps

Photo by: Daniel Kalisz/ Getty Images

Stone’s stellar performance was underlined by the sister entry of Jack Le Brocq/Harri Jones finishing fourth. In doing so Le Brocq secured the 10th and final slot in Supercars’ Finals system, a solid result for a driver whose seat may be under question for 2027.

Defending race winner Matt Payne was fifth, after an eventful race. He and new co-driver Will Davison had an eventful day, Payne earning a five-second penalty for tangling with the other Team 18 Chevrolet of David Reynolds on Conrod Straight. Then there was a pitlane drive-through issued after a wheel rolled across the team’s pitbox, before it was recovered by an unauthorised (and un-firesuited) team member.

Sixth was the Erebus Motorsport Chevrolet of Cooper Murray and Lochie Dalton. As seems its wont, the team arrived at Bathurst ranked ninth of the 12 Supercars teams and simply stepped up, its drivers topping half of the practice sessions. Both Murray and Super2 racer Dalton looked rock-solid, the latter ending the weekend looking like a likely graduate to a full-time seat for next season.

In the first appearance at Bathurst of a Supra since the Group A days of 1992, Toyota teams had a tough Sunday. As noted, Mostert/Coulthard ended their day in the wall, while Walkinshaw TWG team-mates Wood/Jaxon Evans started from the rear of the grid and struggled, before Wood hit the wall at Reid Park. Hurried repairs ensured the car was classified as a finisher, allowing Wood to advance to the Finals as well.

Brad Jones Racing’s Andre Heimgartner/Bryce Fullwood took the top Toyota honours in seventh place after driving a smart race in a car that did not display the qualifying speed to start in the first half of the grid. James Golding/Richie Stanaway were next in the Blanchard Racing Team Ford, the small team putting the car in the Top 10 in qualifying and running steadily all day.

While Kostecki and Hazelwood and the team celebrated the rest of the teams looked forward to the Finals, some drivers – like Bates and Dalton – will no doubt be counting the days until they can return to Bathurst next year, and shake up the establishment all over again.