Brodie Kostecki grabs maiden Supercars pole
Brodie Kostecki secured his maiden pole position ahead of the second race of the Supercars season following a dramatic mixed-weather qualifying session at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Heavy overnight rain threatened to cause havoc with proceedings, but hard work from track crews ensured that qualifying for race two kicked off with minimal delay – albeit in tricky damp conditions on a wet but drying circuit.
With the quick laps coming at the end of the 15 minute session to decide who would make it through to the shootout for pole, Chaz Mostert topped the times for Walkinshaw Andretti United ahead of Anton De Pasquale, with Kostecki and rookie Broc Feeney taking third and fourth.
Cam Waters made the shootout after his poor performance in Saturday’s session, with Todd Hazelwood, Bryce Fullwood and Mark Winterbottom amongst those who mastered the conditions enough to earn shootout slots.
A number of fancied runners struggled however, with race one winner Shane van Gisbergen down in 21st spot after a kerb strike on his final flying lap. That was still ahead of Will Brown and Nick Percat who also found the going tough, with the latter ending his session in the fence at the final corner after sliding off across the grass.
Although the field had switched to slicks for the final laps of qualifying, rain would be falling again by the time the shootout rolled around meaning wet tyres were required when James Courtney hit the track for the first timed lap.
With conditions described onboard as ‘crazy’, Courtney set a benchmark time that was some five seconds slower than the times being set at the end of the qualifying session but he was bettered immediately by Winterbottom as he went three-tenths of a second quicker in the Irwin Tools-backed Falcon.
Will Davison headed out third and adopting old karting lines to deal with the conditions allowed him to move into provisional pole on a 1:40.4304, with the DJR driver reporting that the rain was getting heavier; a fact driven home by the fact that Fullwood found himself struggling for grid on his lap and was unable to launch a bid for pole.
After a moment at the final corner saw Hazelwood lose his time for exceeding track limits, Waters was the first driver to break the 1:40s marker to go half a second quicker than Davison – putting him onto provisional pole with four drivers left to run.
A loss of time in sector two meant Feeney was unable to beat Waters to top spot, but Kostecki – running seventh in the shootout – did manage to go faster with a fine lap that saw him move into top spot by 0.3213s.
The left just De Pasquale and Mostert to run, with De Pasquale losing time to a wild moment at turn seven as he slotted in behind Kostecki in conditions that appeared to worsening.
When Mostert was seven-tenths of a second down in sector one alone, Kostecki’s pole position was secured, leaving him to start the second race of the weekend from top spot.
