Will Brodie Kostecki or Shane van Gisbergen win the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship title?
That is the question we put to you in the days out from the Vailo Adelaide 500 season finale, in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
Kostecki has led the championship for the bulk of the season, including ever since he got back on top of the points table with victory on the Saturday night at Sydney Motorsport Park.
With one event and 300 points left on offer this year, the Erebus Motorsport driver’s margin over van Gisbergen is 131 points.
As already outlined, Kostecki need only finish eighth and ninth across the two races which make up the Vailo Adelaide 500 in order to put the championship title beyond doubt (but for the possibility of any points penalties).
Only thrice has Kostecki finished worse than eighth this year; when he was unfortunate in picking up early damage in Race 10 at Symmons Plains and Race 15 at Hidden Valley, then due to transaxle dramas in Race 16 at the NTI Townsville 500.
He has also navigated the high-risk events of the Bathurst 1000 and Gold Coast 500 with a net loss of only 24 points relative to van Gisbergen over those three races.
History suggests that the 25-year-old is unlikely to be overawed by the occasion in Adelaide and, even if he does have a bad day, we can expect him to score points; Car #99 has finished every race so far in 2023.
All of that goes to van Gisbergen’s comment that he cannot win the championship “on merit,” but rather because Kostecki would have to make a mistake and/or strike bad luck.
The Adelaide Parklands Circuit, though, is another high-risk venue and hence that misfortune could come, even if SVG is not wishing it on his title rival.
For van Gisbergen, there are some statistics which give him a glimmer of hope.
He is the most prolific active driver in the South Australian capital, with five race wins, and went toe-to-toe with Scott McLaughlin in a Sunday thriller in 2020.
The Triple Eight Race Engineering driver did, though, have a shocker in Adelaide last year.
Another key element to consider in all of this is how team-mates might be able to help.
Erebus’s Will Brown is just ahead of future Triple Eight team-mate Broc Feeney in the battle for third in the drivers’ championship although, in recent weeks, the latter won the Sandown 500 and would have bagged a Bathurst 1000 podium if not for a cruel gear tower failure.
Could/would they be deployed to advance the causes of Kostecki and van Gisbergen respectively, and what of the teams’ championship dilemma?
Again, Triple Eight is chasing Erebus, but it is relatively closer at 170 points behind with a total of 576 still on the table.
Will Kostecki do the job he needs to do, as he has done virtually every other time this year?
Or, can van Gisbergen pull off a seemingly unlikely third straight Supercars Championship title – and fourth in total – before he jets off to the United States for a new career in NASCAR?
Cast your vote below, in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
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