Hometown hero Slade Gold Coast's quiet achiever

Through all the chaos and drama, it was a local driver who made the most of two lowly grid positions.

Tim Slade gained a whopping 23 positions across the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 races.

The CoolDrive Racing driver is based down the road, and made the short trip to the track via bike.

As has been the case this season, the #3 CoolDrive Ford battled for one-lap consistency.

Slade, who will shift to PremiAir Racing in 2023, qualified a lowly 20th on Saturday, and crashed out of Sunday qualifying.

After 170 laps across two hot days, Slade reaffirmed his status as 2022’s hardest charger.

The 37-year-old gained eight positions in Saturday’s race, a strong effort considering the race ran green for its entirety.

Come Sunday, and Slade narrowly avoided being taken out in the chicane crash that wiped out six cars.

Having started 25th, Slade was in the train when the circuit was blocked by several damaged cars.

He avoided major damage and crossed the line 12th, which became 10th after penalties were applied.

Will Brown (initially eighth) was handed a time penalty, before Anton De Pasquale (10th) was disqualified.

The 15-position gain was the 10th instance this season that Slade had gained eight or more positions in a race.

Slade is now just four points from the top 10 heading to his home event in Adelaide.

That will be his final round in CoolDrive colours before he is replaced by Todd Hazelwood.

“It was up and down, but we managed to make the most positions in both races,” race engineer Mirko De Rosa told Supercars’ Cool Down Lap podcast.

“Yesterday we started 20th and finished 12th, and today we started last and finished 11th.

“Just gotta keep chipping away… one more to go, and we’ll see what happens after that."

The 2022 Repco Supercars Championship will conclude on the Adelaide streets in December.