BRODIE Kostecki will head to the Repco Supercars Championship-deciding Adelaide Grand Final as the second seed following the Sunday race at the Sandown 500.
The Shell V-Power Racing Team Ford Mustangs finished down the order in Race 34, with Brodie recovering from an early-race penalty to finish 10th and Rylan Gray taking the chequered flag in 23rd.
After a weekend of intermittent rain, eastern Melbourne turned on cool and sunny weather for the final day of action, beginning with a three-part elimination qualifying session culminating in a Top 10 Shootout.
Brodie overcame left-hand-down steering to make it through Part 1 in sixth place, while Rylan held down 10th after the opening runs but didn’t improve on his second and slipped to 11th.
Brodie again wound up sixth in Part 2, which meant he was fifth out of the gate for the Top 10 Shootout. A strong lap in the one-lap session vaulted him to fourth, putting him on the outside of the second row.
Brodie held that spot in the early stages of the 79-lap, 250km race, but was given a pit lane drivethrough penalty for a breach of the start procedure (turning Car 17’s engine off at the end of the reconnaissance lap and coasting for seven seconds prior to stopping in his grid position). That dropped him to 23rd.
The call was made to run the first stint long, then put a lot of fuel in at the first stop to give him a long middle stint and a short stint home with a tyre advantage. That plan plus strong pace left him 15th after the final stops, and he charged up to 10th by the chequered flag.
Rylan had a tough race, struggling to make forward progress across the three stints. He crossed the line in 23rd place after a fierce last-lap battle, missing out on a pass by just 0.017s.
Brodie’s recovery secured him second seeding for the Adelaide Grand Final by just 15 points ahead of Broc Feeney and Chaz Mostert, which means he enters the title-deciding weekend just 30 points behind championship leader Matt Payne.
Rylan remains 19th in the Drivers Championship standings with one round remaining, while we continue to hold down fifth place in the Teams Championship standings.
Opening practice for the Adelaide Grand Final gets underway on November 26.
