Kostecki 'didn't play cards right' in Feeney hunt

Brodie Kostecki feels he “didn’t really play my cards right” in his quest to overtake Broc Feeney towards the end of the Penrite Oil Sandown 500.

Kostecki hounded long-time leader Feeney after a late Safety Car period, with the #88 Red Bull Ampol Camaro victorious by just 0.9s after more than 200 minutes of racing.

The series leader had a big lunge at Turn 4 in the closing laps, but Feeney held firm to become the youngest Sandown 500 winner, with co-driver Jamie Whincup taking his sixth win.

Speaking after the race, Kostecki believes he used too much life in his tyres prior to the Safety Car period, with Feeney’s lead slashed from 10 to six seconds before the caution.

Regardless, it was a strong comeback by the #99 considering Russell was forced to double stack in the stops during the first Safety Car period, and dropped to 11th.

It came a day after Kostecki was beaten to pole position in the Top Ten Shootout by Erebus Motorsport teammate Will Brown, who gifted the final spot on the podium to Shane van Gisbergen/Richie Stanaway after a late error.

“[The emotion is] a lot worse today than what it was yesterday, that’s for sure,” said Kostecki, who extended his championship lead to 155 points on Sunday.

“It was a really cool race. Obviously, having double stack there wasn’t quite ideal but D-Russ did an awesome job, coming back from 11th to drive it up to fourth in his stint.

“The Coca-Cola car had plenty of pace there and [I] just didn’t really play my cards right [in] the last stint before the Safety Car came out.

Feeney and Kostecki were split by the lapped car of James Golding at the final restart, but aside from the Turn 4 lunge, the #88 had it covered.

“I think, unfortunately, I had James Golding sat in front of me and had to make up that eight tenths there,” Kostecki added.

“Just used too much of the tyre trying to get to the back of him, and then the tyre pressures blow out after you sort of follow someone for two to three laps.

When asked if he would’ve done anything differently, Kostecki added: “No, not really — Broc played the race really smart and placed his car in all the right areas and I would have had to take pretty big risks to do something to overtake him.

“I didn’t really want to have any wheel-to-wheel contact – I kind of like my steering rack that I have at the moment – so I just sort of wanted to see if I could do it a different way without having to rub him up too bad.

“He just obviously raced really smart and was going to put me in a situation that I wasn’t really going to come out of.”