Leader's remarkable 'double vision' reveal; former Bathurst winner ...

All hail the reigning champion.

Brodie Kostecki’s title-defending season was off the rails before it had even begun thanks to a falling-out with his Erebus team that had him sit out the first two rounds of the campaign.

Things were patched up in time for him to return in April, but by then he was long out of the championship fight, and even if he hadn’t been, neither he nor the team looked anything like the combination that romped to the title double in 2023.

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But in the last few weeks things have started to click again.

Perhaps it’s because he’s since locked down a move to Dick Johnson Racing in 2025, securing his future.

Maybe it’s simply that great drivers rise to great occasions.

Whatever the reason, this weekend at long last has seen Kostecki back to his best

The smile is back. The twinkle in the eye is back.

And the pace is certainly back.

Back-to-back pole positions at Mount Panorama — and his first pole since last year’s Adelaide 500 — prove as much.

But unlike last year, when he was in perfect and dominant harmony with Erebus, this year the competition was fierce.

The battle for pole was decided by just 0.131 seconds.

General Motors and Ford split the front row, with Cam Waters qualifying second.

Four different teams are represented in the top four places on the grid.

The question: unlike last year, does victory Bathurst beckon for Bush?

KOSTECKI STILL KING OF THE MOUNTAIN

Kostecki didn’t end all-in qualifying as the fastest driver, but it was clear he had pace in hand if you looked closer at the times.

The 26-year-old’s session had hinged on a smash at the top of the mountain that had done damage to both right-side wheels. Though he was able to limp back to pit lane for repairs, the car was far from its best for the rest of the session.

It was impressive he made the shootout at all, but once he had, the question was how much more speed he’d be able to find with a car in pristine condition.

The answer was an impressive 0.15 seconds, more than all but one other driver in the shootout and comfortably more than presumed pole challenger Broc Feeney.

Improvements between qualifying and shootout

Richie Stanaway: 0.176 seconds quicker

Brodie Kostecki: 0.153 seconds quicker

Cam Waters: 0.008 seconds quicker

Jack Le Brocq: 0.205 seconds slower

Broc Feeney: 0.206 seconds slower

Anton De Pasquale: 0.245 seconds slower

Will Brown: 0.396 seconds slower

Matt Payne: 0.592 seconds slower

Chaz Mostert: 0.752 seconds slower

Andre Heimgartner: 9.194 seconds slower

On the way to pole position he set the fastest second and third sectors. His first sector was only 0.064 seconds down on the best of the session.

Remarkably he probably could have gone faster still had he not been afflicted by vibrations on his lap.

“It was a bit hard, the lap, to be honest,” he told Fox Sports. “I had a real bad tyre vibration.

“It was really hard into Conrod. I was starting to get double vision from the vibrations.”

He also revealed he’s been battling illness this weekend, even having watched the day’s first practice session from his bed.

It’s not surprising he managed to overcome those obstacles if you remember how fast Kostecki was this time last year, putting almost half a second on the field in the shootout.

Clearly he clicks with this circuit.

But even that supreme raw speed didn’t translate to Bathurst-winning pace. Come Sunday night Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway had risen to the top.

“We didn’t really have a good strategy last year,” he said. “We made a few mistakes during the race and let the Bulls get in front of us.

“It’s pretty hard to pass from there. Just made a few more mistakes leading on from that.

“We just have to focus on ourselves. We know we’ve got a fast race car. We just have to minimise the mistakes.”

Kostecki has finished third, fourth and second in the last three editions of the Great Race.

The next step is obvious, and despite his rough start to this season, he’s never been better placed to win the sport’s most famous race.

WHERE ARE OUR CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENDERS?

Kostecki isn’t in title contention this year, but three drivers are hoping to swing the championship in their favour with a big result this weekend.

Contenders Will Brown, Chaz Mostert and Broc Feeney all made the shootout, and Feeney was best among them, putting himself on the front foot.

Feeney will launch from third on the grid, where he’ll share the second row with Stanaway.

The Triple Eight ace has looked the most comfortable of the title hopefuls all weekend. He and co-driver Jamie Whincup have constantly troubled the top of the time sheets, and he was a close match for Kostecki before the final sector, where the lion’s share of their 0.350-second disparity was found.

It wasn’t a knockout blow, however.

Brown sounded resigned before the shootout to the fact that pole would be beyond his grasp. While it’s hard to pinpoint where exactly this weekend has got away from him, co-driver Scott Pye’s Friday crash presents itself as a potential pick.

His pessimism proved correct, but it was far from damaging. He’ll get away from fifth on the grid, just two places behind his teammate and well within range of the sort of points he needs to score to maintain his healthy points lead.

Mostert, meanwhile, will feel flattest of the three after the shootout.

He was on the back foot as soon as his lap started, his first sector time the slowest among the shootout contenders except for Andre Heimgartner, who ran off the road at the first turn.

He was fastest of anyone in the middle sector at the time of his lap, but even that small boost was obliterated when Kostecki ascended the mountain.

He ended up with the slowest representative time ahead of only Heimgartner, leaving him ninth on the grid.

Mostert would’ve been braced for a tough result, Walkinshaw Andretti United having struggled all year for results in shootouts with a car that’s too gentle on its tyres.

That characteristic can be worked around in all-in qualifying sessions, where Mostert can set multiple preparation laps, and it can be an asset in race conditions, but in one-lap qualifying it’s a major handicap.

With 189 points to close on Brown, starting behind him is a serious blow.

Of course, as any driver will tell you, the Bathurst 1000 is a long race, and anything can happen. Mostert has won in situations of greater difficulty before. In 2014 he won from last on the grid. In 2021 he dropped to 12th halfway through the race with a tyre failure and still recovered to mount the top step.

It’d be absolutely on brand for him to win from an unfancied ninth on the grid.

STANAWAY MAKES STATEMENT

Defending Bathurst winner Stanaway will launch from fourth after a standout qualifying performance.

The New Zealander only just snuck into the shootout in 10th and was thus first on the road in theoretically the slowest track conditions.

But that didn’t deter him.

He set the benchmark extremely high with his opening lap — so high, in fact, that his first sector stood as the fastest of the session even after all drivers had completed their laps.

It was no quirk of conditions either, as can sometimes be the case. The only three drivers ahead of him were among the final four drivers to set their times. There was clearly track improvement through the session.

It was clear too in the comparison with teammate Matt Payne, whose provisional pole time on Friday earnt him the right to be last in the shootout queue.

By the time Payne hit the track it was obvious that beating Kostecki would require a very special lap, and a nudge of the fence at Forrest’s Elbow suggested he was bordering on overdriving.

But all the same, Stanaway had him covered by 0.308 seconds.

It could be an important result for the senior Kiwi, who’s still without a drive for 2025 after being dropped by Grove in favour of young gun Kai Allen.

He’s tipped to replace Tim Slade at PremiAir next year in a deal that could be announced as soon as next week.

If it isn’t yet over the line, his performance on the biggest stage will surely get the deal done.

TEAM 18, DJR PULL ‘HUMBLING’ ALL-NIGHTERS AFTER HORROR SMASHES

While most of the Supercars paddock embraced day 3 of the Bathurst 1000, two teams were still in the thick of a carnage-strewn day 2.

For Team 18 and Dick Johnson Racing, Friday never finished thanks to two monster crashes that forced both into all-nighters to get their cars ready for practice 5.

Dave Reynolds was the first to smash his Camaro, coming a cropper at the Dipper, losing control on entry and slamming into the concrete barrier in a 31G impact.

It left his car with considerable front-end damage, and while Reynolds emerged uninjured — and remarkably reporting no soreness on Saturday — his mechanics faced a massive workload that would take them well into the morning.

“I feel brand new, but some of the boys are a little bit second-hand,” Reynolds told Fox Sports. “The ones with the red eyes, they’ve had an all-nighter.

“They worked in waves. Some went home at 12 o’clock. Some went home at 4am. There were about five or six guys who stayed here until pretty much 6:30am — they went home for a shower and came straight back.

“They’ve done an incredible job. They love it. They actually band together and become this little unit of a team. It’s just awesome to watch it all happen.”

Team owner Charlie Schwerkolt revealed the damage had been worse than expected.

“It was a pretty big hit. It was bigger than we thought,” he told the Supercars website. “It twisted the whole car around 25 millimetres.

“It needed a lot of bar work repairs, so we needed to get it all properly straight and all done professionally. But we’ve got a great team of guys and girls, and they just did an incredible job here.

“The crazy thing about it is he should have been in the shootout very easily. He was really, really super quick, but he was trying hard.

“I’ll try and get [the team] home nice and early tonight. Unfortunately they don’t have the shootout, but they can leave early.”

Team 18 was joined by DJR burning the midnight oil after Will Davison’s car was hurled into the cement a few metres down the road from the site of Reynolds’s wreck at the end of qualifying.

His crash was a double impact that peaked at a massive 58G, damaging the Mustang so badly that there were early concerns about whether it could be repaired at the track.

But come Saturday morning car 17 was ready to tackle the mountain again after a power of work Davison described as “humbling”.

“Bathurst throws it all at us,” he told Fox Sports. “It’s certainly incredibly humbling, the determination and the dedication that they all have to do the job.

“This place is always full of tales, and it’s just amazing to see the condition the car’s in now.

“Not one negative word out of anyone but, ‘Let’s just get this thing together’. I’m so proud and thankful for the team. They’re bloody absolute legends.”

Davison will line up 16th on the grid ahead of Reynolds in 21st.

TOP 10 SHOOTOUT RESULTS

Leaderboard

1. Brodie Kostecki (Erebus Motorsport): 2 minutes 5.512 seconds

2. Cam Waters (Tickford Racing): +0.131 seconds

3. Broc Feeney (Triple Eight): +0.350 seconds

4. Richie Stanaway (Grove Racing): +0.417 seconds

5. Will Brown (Triple Eight): +0.651 seconds

6. Jack Le Brocq (Erebus Motorsport): +0.671 seconds

7. Matt Payne (Grove Racing): +0.725 seconds

8. Anton de Pasquale (Dick Johnson Racing): +0.727 seconds

9. Chaz Mostert (Walkinshaw Andretti United): +1.029 seconds

10. Andre Heimgartner (Brad Jones Racing): +9.609 seconds

Best sectors

Sector 1: 51.488 seconds (Richie Stanaway)

Sector 2: 33.246 seconds (Brodie Kostecki)

Sector 3: 40.715 seconds (Brodie Kostecki)

Theoretical best: 2 minutes 5.449 seconds (-0.063 seconds)

BATHURST 1000 STARTING GRID

1. Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood (Erebus Motorsport)

2. Cam Waters and James Moffat (Tickford Racing)

3. Broc Feeney and Jamie Whincup (Triple Eight Race Engineering)

4. Richie Stanaway and Dale Wood (Grove Racing)

5. Will Brown and Scott Pye (Triple Eight Race Engineering)

6. Jack Le Brocq and Jayden Ojeda (Erebus Motorsport)

7. Matt Payne and Garth Tander (Grove Racing)

8. Anton De Pasquale and Tony D’Alberto (Dick Johnson Racing)

9. Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth (Walkinshaw Andretti United)

10. Andre Heimgartner and Declan Fraser (Brad Jones Racing)

11. James Golding and David Russell (PremiAir Racing)

12. Cameron Hill and Cameron Crick (Matt Stone Racing)

13. Nick Percat and Dylan O’Keeffe (Matt Stone Racing)

14. Ryan Wood and Fabian Coulthard (Walkinshaw Andretti United)

15. Jaxon Evans and Dean Fiore (Brad Jones Racing)

16. Will Davison and Kai Allen (Dick Johnson Racing)

17. Macauley Jones and Jordan Boys (Brad Jones Racing)

18. Craig Lowndes and Cooper Murray (Triple Eight Race Engineering)

19. Thomas Randle and Tyler Everingham (Tickford Racing)

20. Aaron Love and Aaron Cameron (Blanchard Racing Team)

21. David Reynolds and Warren Luff (Team 18)

22. Mark Winterbottom and Michael Caruso (Team 18)

23. James Courtney and Jack Perkins (Blanchard Racing Team)

24. Bryce Fullwood and Jaylyn Robotham (Brad Jones Racing)

25. Tim Slade and Cameron McLeod (PremiAir Racing)

26. Matt Chahda and Bradley Vaughan (Matt Chahda Motorsport)