BRODIE Kostecki concedes that he wasn’t willing to risk throwing away second place in a bid to nab the win in the Sandown 500.
A late Safety Car period, triggered by steering failure on Cameron Hill’s Chevrolet Camaro, brought Kostecki to within striking distance of eventual winners Broc Feeney and Jamie Whincup.
Once he’d disposed of the lapped car of James Golding, Kostecki closed right onto Feeney’s rear bumper and at one point looked poised to snatch the lead, but his charge soon faded with his tyres.
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“I just didn’t quite play my cards right in that last stint there before the Safety Car came out,” Kostecki told media after the race.
“Broc was 10 seconds ahead, so I probably should’ve just saved my tyres for a bit.
“(On the restart) I unfortunately had Golding starting in front of me and had to make up that seven-eight tenths, and just used too much of the tyre trying to get to the back of (Broc), and then the tyre pressures blow out after you follow someone for two-three laps.”
When asked by V8 Sleuth if, with hindsight, he’d have done anything differently on the restart, he said: “No, not really.
“Broc played the race really smart and placed his car in the right areas. I’d have had to take a pretty big risk to do something to overtake him, and didn’t really want to have any wheel-to-wheel contact. I kind of like the steering rack that I have at the moment…
“I wanted to see if I could do it sort of a different way without having to rub him up too bad, and he raced really smart and it was going to put me into a situation that I wasn’t going to come out of.”
For Feeney, holding off the championship’s in-form driver – and a driver known for being a hard racer – added special meaning to his first Sandown 500 triumph.
“When I came out of Dandenong Road and I looked up in the mirror because Cam (Hill) had been right behind me, and I was like ‘where is the orange car?’” Feeney said.
“I hoped he’d just been overtaken, and then I looked up on the big screen and saw that he was stuck.
“I knew it was going to be tough to hang on. When we came out (after the final stops), we had a few lap better tyres than Brodie but we had a bit of a gap.
“I could see that he was gaining before the Safety Car but I was just trying to save my tyre; I knew that I’d be able to hang on without a Safety Car, but I also knew that if it did fall I’d need something to hang on at the end.
“On that restart, he was quick for a few laps and nearly got me to be honest, but then got stuck behind and I was able to get a little bit of a gap and hang on.
“He’s had a super-fast car all weekend and he’s been driving awesome so I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, but to hang on makes it pretty special.”
Kostecki’s risk-averse approach meant he left Sandown with the points lead, and with his margin increased to 155 over third-placed Shane van Gisbergen, with Feeney 204 markers off the lead.
V8 Sleuth’s coverage of the 2023 Penrite Oil Sandown 500 is proudly presented by Biante – Fuel your passion with winning model cars. Visit Biante here to check out their range of model cars in a range of scales from 1:64 to 1:10.
