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Brodie Kostecki dominated the weekend’s Round 8 of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship with a clean sweep of all three races, two out of three pole positions – and points for fastest lap to boot.
After such a dominant weekend at The Bend, we ask you in this week’s Pirtek Poll if Kostecki’s weekend will prove a turning point in one of the most tightly contested championship battles in Supercars history.
Kostecki executed a demoralising blow to his rivals, the first driver to win a race this season while leading the standings, which sees the #99 Coca-Cola Camaro driver firm as the clear standout among the quartet of Chevrolets battling at the top of the standings.
Put simply: will anyone stop Kostecki claiming the 2023 – his first – Supercars title?
The weekend’s crushing performance sees the Erebus Motorsport driver on 1895 points to extend his advantage over next-best Shane van Gisbergen to 137 points.
He’s also 228 clear of Red Bull Ampol’s Broc Feeney in third, and 258 up on team-mate Will Brown, who dropped from second to fourth after a weekend to forget at The Bend.
That comes after Kostecki’s NASCAR Cup Series debut, where he and Shane van Gisbergen both competed at the Indianapolis Road Course.
With Erebus leading the Teams’ standings with its drivers first and second in the points heading into Round 8, the title appeared to be an intra-team battle with Brown the biggest threat to Kostecki – and vice versa.
Ahead of The Bend, Brown confirmed his departure from the team with a move to Triple Eight Race Engineering for 2024 – where he’ll replace a US-bound van Gisbergen – with Jack Le Brocq announced as Brown’s replacement at Erebus.
That alone was enough for fans and commentators to suggest Brown’s title bid was hampered, with favour within the team falling to Kostecki on any fifty-fifty calls.
Of course, Erebus Team Principal Barry Ryan says that this is not the case – “He’s still a hundred percent committed to winning races for us,” Ryan said following the announcement – while Brown himself said the news of his move to Triple Eight in the lead-up did not impact his performance at The Bend.
With the clean sweep as Brown suffered some poor luck out of his control, Kostecki’s biggest points bounty of the year seems to have put paid to the threat.
Brown had already been somewhat neutralised, with Kostecki’s victory under lights in Race 18 at Sydney Motorsport Park – his first since Race 5 at the Australian Grand Prix – taking the lead that he’d lost to his team-mate at Townsville.
He now has six race wins from 22 races, with van Gisbergen, Feeney and Brown level on four each, with a single victory for Waters, Winterbottom, Le Brocq and De Pasquale.
In terms of one-lap superiority, Kostecki was level with Waters, Van Gisbergen, Feeney and Brown on three pole positions ahead of The Bend but has now stamped his authority on his rivals to stretch that to five.
Thomas Randle was the only driver to prevent a qualifying clean sweep for the #99 Camaro in South Australia.
Yet Kostecki was not getting ahead of himself, and the title is far from over as the championship heads into the endurance races.
A total of 1200 points are still on offer if a driver was to win every remaining event – meaning that statistically, every competitor down to and including Jack Smith, who’s currently 24th on 703 points – can win.
Of course, that would require a miraculous scenario where Smith wins all remaining races, and Kostecki scores zero points.
More realistically, Kostecki’s 137-point lead may be the biggest advantage he’s enjoyed so far this season, but it’s not even a single race win at any of 2023’s remaining events.
There are no Sprint events remaining, meaning no additional points for fastest lap – Kostecki took those in Race 21 at The Bend, too.
There’s a 300-point haul for victory at Sandown, another 300 for Bathurst and 150 for the winner of any of the four races at Surfers Paradise and Adelaide’s season finale.
As history shows, anything can happen at Sandown and Bathurst – which could turn the championship on its head.
Yet Kostecki’s form is unrivalled. Even when he was beaten to Race 21 pole at The Bend, it took him only two corners to lead the race. Even then, a mysterious front-end handling imbalance that saw Kostecki on the radio to the team was managed from behind the wheel, the 25-year-old winning the race by just over a second. Nothing could seemingly stop him.
Does Kostecki have one hand on the championship trophy or will one of his rivals – whether from the other side of his own garage or from elsewhere – catch the #99 Coca-Cola Camaro?
Cast your vote below, in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
