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Brodie Kostecki admits he “didn’t really play my cards right” as he tried to hunt down eventual winner Broc Feeney in the final stint of the Penrite Oil Sandown 500.
A Safety Car had closed the field up and given Kostecki a golden opportunity to try and snatch victory for himself and co-driver David Russell, but he believes he used up too much of his tyres trying to catch the #88 Camaro before that yellow flag period.
Kostecki had shaken off any disappointment from qualifying second in the Top 10 Shootout on the afternoon prior, but that was not the case today.
“[The emotion is] A lot worse today than what it was yesterday, that’s for sure,” he said, despite extending his championship lead with the runner-up finish.
“It was a really cool race. Obviously, having double stack there wasn’t quite ideal but D-Russ did an awesome job, coming back from 11th to drive it up to fourth in his stint.
“The Coca-Cola car had plenty of pace there and [I] just didn’t really play my cards right [in] the last stint before the Safety Car came out.
“Broc was 10 seconds ahead so I probably should have just saved my tyres a bit.”
Feeney did have the protection of the lapped James Golding being second in the queue when the race restarted with what would be 15 laps of green flag racing to go.
Kostecki caught up from a second behind when they had taken the green flag again, but his attack quickly fizzled out.
“I think, unfortunately, I had James Golding sat in front of me and had to make up that eight tenths there, and just used too much of the tyre trying to get to the back of him, and then the tyre pressures blow out after you sort of follow someone for two to three laps,” he recounted.
“Broc raced really smart and placed the car in the right spots, and it was a really good race, and he did well to pull it off.”
Nevertheless, Kostecki has no regrets about how he performed after the Safety Car.
“No, not really; Broc played the race really smart and placed his car in all the right areas and I would have had to take pretty big risks to do something to overtake him,” he explained.
“I didn’t really want to have any wheel-to-wheel contact – I kind of like my steering rack that I have at the moment – so I just sort of wanted to see if I could do it a different way without having to rub him up too bad.
“He just obviously raced really smart and was going to put me in a situation that I wasn’t really going to come out of.”
Still, with Shane van Gisbergen finishing third, Kostecki’s championship lead crept up to 155 points.
“It’s always good to come home on the podium; would have been cool to win this race but there’s a bigger one coming up so we’ll just put our heads down,” remarked the West Australian, referring to the Repco Bathurst 1000.
“The car’s had so much speed, the last few rounds, and D-Russ did an awesome job in his stints.
“So, we’ll just put our heads down and go on to Bathurst and just try to minimise mistakes and go from there.”
Erebus will test again on Tuesday, September 26 before practice starts at Mount Panorama on Thursday, October 5.
