BRODIE Kostecki lost 27 points from his championship lead over challenger Shane van Gisbergen in the opening leg of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
But it could have been so much worse.
A kerb strike on his Top 10 Shootout lap put the Erebus Camaro in the thick of the action for the 250km race’s opening corners.
Kostecki and PremiAir Racing’s Tim Slade entered the tricky chicane side-by-side and only one of them came out.
The former bounced off the kerb on the inside of Turn 2 and shouldered Slade into the barriers.
Kostecki’s Camaro escaped undamaged and soldiered on to finish fifth, a solid result on a day where the #99 entry didn’t have the pace of the front-runners.
Cam Waters gets a blinding start!
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A stewards report later revealed that PremiAir requested the incident be investigated in-race, and a review of footage left officials to rule that neither driver was “wholly or predominately to blame”.
Asked post-race if the championship had been on his mind starting from 10th, Kostecki gave a typically bullish response.
“I think a few guys thought I was just going to give them the right-of-way, but you can’t really do that in this game,” he said.
“I don’t really want to get involved in someone else’s crash!
“I was able to get a really good start, got the holeshot off the line on a few of them… not sure who was to my outside, but I was on the kerb and I think they ended up in the tyre wall or something.
“It’s just racing, at the end of the day.”
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Slade was also pragmatic about the incident, despite his promising afternoon being ruined in only a matter of metres.
“It is just one of those things where I don’t think it was anything intentional,” he said, having finished a lap down in 21st.
“It is just with the kerbs and the lack of space here, and when you hit wheel to wheel it rips the steering wheel out of your hand and you have no control over where you are going.”
Kostecki now holds a 104-point advantage over van Gisbergen – who finished second today – with three races and 450 points up for grabs.
“I’m just trying to do the best job I can and, like I’ve said in the past, the rest will take care of itself,” he said.
“I think Shane got second in that race so he gained a fair chunk of points on us.
“I’m not very good at maths, but you times that by four and he’s leading, so we’ve got to be a bit better than what we’ve been doing this weekend and we’ll be right there.”
Van Gisbergen was also the subject of an in-race investigation, the Kiwi cleared after a pass for the race lead on countryman Matt Payne drew a review request from Grove Racing.
