WILL Brown has taken a relaxed view of the Turn 1 Sydney incident which threatened to suddenly put him on the back foot in the championship hunt.
Brown entered Sydney Motorsport Park atop the standings but ceded that mantle to Erebus Motorsport teammate Brodie Kostecki after the latter’s win under lights in Race 1.
It looked set to go from bad to worse when Brown’s #9 Coca-Cola Camaro speared off at the first corner of the Sunday race, sending him back to last.
David Reynolds found himself sandwiched between Anton De Pasquale and Brown, with Mark Winterbottom further to their inside, and the 2017 Bathurst 1000 winner joined Brown firing through the weeds.
Brown at one stage was shaping to drop to fourth in the points, behind Triple Eight duo Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney, before clawing his way back to 14th by the end of 36 laps – despite a slow pitstop.
That means he has retained second overall, 41 points adrift of Kostecki with five rounds and a maximum of 1515 points still in play.
“It was a pretty wild day,” said Brown.
“I didn’t do the best job in qualifying, that was on me.
“I did about three 360s off the start there. It was just a racing incident, four-wide doesn’t work and I was on the outside; I couldn’t back out, I couldn’t go forward so I went to the grass.
“But overall a solid weekend, still second in the championship.
“It’s really tight between the Red Bulls and us still so hopefully we can have a few weeks off, recoup, get ready for Tailem Bend and come out even stronger.”
Brown’s title deficit was lessened by a tough second half of Race 2 for Kostecki.
Kostecki ran third before the pitstop sequence but was undercut by Feeney, De Pasquale and Bryce Fullwood.
By the end he had dropped to eighth, behind the hard-charging Ford duo of Cam Waters and Chaz Mostert.
“I got a pretty good start off the line and was able to muscle through a few guys at the start and got past Broc to put ourselves on the podium but unfortunately a bit of strategy didn’t fall our way and I lost a bit of car speed in dirty air in the last stint,” said Kostecki.
“A few little dramas as well with the car which isn’t ideal but still to come away P8 is not too terrible, but not the results that we need.”
Triple Eight is now just 80 points off Erebus in the battle for the teams’ championship.
