Shane van Gisbergen completes Sandown sweep, Brodie Kostecki shines in the rain

Shane van Gisbergen has become the first person since 1994 to win the first five straight Supercars races of a season after the Triple Eight driver took a third win at this weekend’s Sandown SuperSprint, bringing home the maximum 600 points available so far this year.

Despite entering the round with a broken collarbone and question marks around whether he would even race this weekend, the 2016 series champion dominated the Sunday races in wet conditions, his biggest challenge coming in the final race from young rookie Brodie Kostecki.

As one of the new recruits at Erebus Motorsport this year, Kostecki is only in his fifth full-time race and put on a show in working his way past more experienced campaigners to take second place, showing better pace than anyone bar the eventual race winner.

A holeshot for van Gisbergen on the run to Turn 1 gave him the best chance of survival as the Dunlop tyres started to kick up massive amounts of spray, the field all getting through the first turn safety but it wasn’t long for someone to end up the wrong way around, James Courtney’s Tickford Racing car being spun at Turn 3 but not collected on the way through.

As van Gisbergen started to check out up front, David Reynolds moved to second in his Kelly Grove Racing Ford Mustang, squeezing past the Triple Eight Holden Commodore of Jamie Whincup. Reynolds’ team-mate Andre Heimgartner had a fight on his hands but ended up losing fourth place to hard-charging rookie Brodie Kostecki, the young gun setting the race’s fastest laps early on aboard the #99 entry.

Dick Johnson Racing was lucky to escape a disaster when Will Davison spun on the approach to Turn 2, ending up in the middle of the right-left complex and doing a flick-spin just as his team-mate Anton de Pasquale arrived on the scene, forcing the #11 to take to the grass to avoid an intra-team collision.

The march forwards for Brodie Kostecki continued when he passed Whincup on the main straight at the start of lap eight, getting past the seven-time champion for a provisional spot on the podium. It only took him a few more laps to get past former Erebus driver Reynolds, moving the #99 up to second as his team-mate Will Brown got up to fifth, displacing Heimgartner.

Chaz Mostert’s run for second in the championship suffered a glitch when the Walkinshaw Andretti United driver suffered a throttle cable failure, having to pull into the car’s garage for the problem to be fixed but it put him at the back of the order multiple laps down.

With just over three seconds splitting the top two, another five split Kostecki to Reynolds who found himself over ten seconds clear of Brown who had worked his way past Davison for fourth, making it two-four for Erebus cars on the track. Traffic from lapped cars who had already pitted slowed down Kostecki’s progress, the gap remaining around four seconds heading towards their compulsory pit stops.

van Gisbergen took his stop on lap 27, coming out of the lane with a clear track in front of him which gave Kostecki the lead of a Supercars race for the first time. Choosing to stay out until late in the race, Kostecki kept gaining time over Reynolds but lost it relative to van Gisbergen who started setting fastest laps, not wanting to give anything away to the rookie.

Reynolds pitted with five laps remaining and came back with clear air but Brown lost time after his stop on lap 33, resulting in a drop from running in effective fourth place to behind Whincup and Davison in sixth. Kostecki relinquished the lead on lap 34, taking on his two tyres with only two laps remaining.

Despite the quick stop he expectedly rejoined the circuit behind van Gisbergen, the Kiwi retaking the lead and staying there to take win number five in a row, the first driver since Mark Skaife in 1994 who won the first six races to do so.

Reynolds managed to take his first podium for KGR in third, eight seconds clear of Whincup and Davison who completed the top five. Struggles in the final laps for Brown dropped him behind Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters, ending up with a seventh place ahead of the Brad Jones Racing entries driven by Todd Hazelwood and Nick Percat as Mark Winterbottom rounded out the ten for Team 18.