De Pasquale and DJR return to winning ways in Supercars’ second Townsville race
Anton de Pasquale took a dominant first Supercars Championship win of 2023 for himself and Dick Johnson Racing in Race 2 at Townsville.
De Pasquale had only achieved one top-five finish in the first 16 races of this season, and his pace on Sunday morning on the streets of Townsville did not indicate a win was on the way.
Erebus Motorsport’s Brodie Kostecki, who was points leader coming into the weekend, set a 1:12.8387 to top qualifying by 0.0868 seconds, with the top 23 covered by just 0.8202s and with de Pasquale 0.3272s back in eighth place.
In the one-lap superpole shootout later on it was Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters who came out on top ahead of Jack Le Brocq, Thomas Randle and Kostecki. De Pasquale was sixth fastest, 0.4160s off the pace.
Waters held off Le Brocq through the first laps, while Shane van Gisbergen – who had qualified 5.7s off the pace in 25th and last place – got spun around and fell far behind the back of the back.
Le Brocq attempted to pass Waters on lap five of 88 with a diving move down the inside of Turn 11, but went too deep, dropped back behind and spent the rest of the stint in second place.
Waters pitted from the lead on lap 23, with LeBrocq doing the same a lap later and leaving Andre Heimgartner at the front of the field. Le Brocq’s stop almost ended in disaster as Tim Slade was being pushed out backwards from the PremiAir Racing garage, which is just before Le Brocq’s pit stall, and Le Brocq narrowly avoided smashing into Slade’s car and several of his crew.
Bryce Fullwood was next to the front once Brad Jones Racing team-mate Heimgartner pitted, and de Pasquale extended his opening stint as long as possible so that by lap 32 he was at the front of the field. It proved to be a masterful strategy DJR, who had worked overnight on solving electrical problems that had plagued de Pasquale’s car through Saturday, as the safety car appeared on lap 36 due to debris on track.
That meant de Pasquale could pit and lose minimal track position, and he only dropped to fourth following a quick pit stop in which his team opted to go light on fuel.
It did not take long once green flag action resumed for de Pasquale to make his way to the front again, and once ahead he pulled away which gave him further strategy freedom. Following his next pit stop on lap 64 he had an 11s lead, and he managed that gap to win by 5.0692s over Kostecki.
After several laps of battling during the final stint, Heimgartner established himself in what would be third place over Broc Feeney as they were both later passed by Kostecki.
Feeney fell into the clutches of Triple 8 team-mate van Gisbergen after that, and once the latter got ahead he was told to return the position. He initially refused and tried to chase down Heimgartner, but having failed to do so he slowed by a huge amount on the final lap and let Feeney back through to fourth.
The early contenders got caught on strategy and did not recover, with Randle eighth, Le Brocq tenth and Waters down in 15th. Behind him there was a final lap collision between James Courtney and David Reynolds as they fought over 16th.
Brown heads the standings on 1255 points, 43 ahead of Kostecki and 44 ahead of Feeney while van Gisbergen is fourth, 81 points adrift.
The next race takes place on July 28-30 at Sydney Motorsport Park.
