Why Winterbottom was surprised by early Kostecki elimination

Brodie Kostecki’s early Finals elimination caught the eye of 2015 Supercars champion Mark Winterbottom, who believes the seeds were sewn with a Friday crash.

The Shell V-Power Racing Team star was the first major casualty of the 2025 Finals, following a big crash in Saturday qualifying.

After crashing out of Friday practice at Turn 12, Kostecki arrived on Saturday and suffered a major incident at the front chicane, which ruled him out of that day’s race.

It forced the Shell Ford squad into frantic overnight repairs, with the team completing works in the early hours of Sunday before Boost Mobile Qualifying.

Having started the weekend fifth in points, Kostecki fell into the drop zone. Despite his team’s best efforts with a bold strategy, was unable to recover.

Winterbottom labelled Kostecki was one of the favourites for the title, as did fans in a Supercars.com poll.

Speaking post-event, Winterbottom suggested the knock-on effect from the Friday crash put more pressure on Saturday, and was surprised the #38 Ford wasn’t as lucky as others with Kostecki’s repeated tyre bundle strikes.

“Going into the weekend, I thought he was one of the favourites,” Winterbottom said on Supercars’ new The Run Home podcast.

“I picked him to go through quite easily, to be honest.

“This is where these tracks coming into the backend of the year — they’re very tricky tracks — they're high consequence, high risk, high reward tracks.

“He normally nails it, that Friday accident does put you on the back foot, because you miss your green tyre run.

“Instead of prepping the car to go fast, you’re prepping it to fix a mistake. He was on the back foot quite early, but I expected him to bounce back on Saturday.

“He kept clipping that inside kerb at Turn 1, a lot of cars were, it was ripping his front splitter off, where other cars were getting away with it."

Speaking on his Lucky Dogs podcast, Kostecki suggested one of the cones that connects the splitter to the car had broken off, leaving the loosely-hanging splitter vulnerable to further damage.

“I hit the tyre bundle quite early… it must’ve broken one of the cones out that locates the splitter onto the bar fascia,” Kostecki said.

“Obviously it dropped on that left-hand side. We taped it back up, but when you’re always clipping that bundle in qualy, it obviously had a fair bit of damage.

“Went back out, and turned out to have Maccas trays on the front wheels. I remember turning in for Turn 2, and the steering wheel going numb."

Winterbottom added that DJR’s decision to send Kostecki out was one of desperation, with drivers fighting for a spot in the Top Ten Shootout. However, instead of starting 16th, Kostecki watched on from the sidelines.

“You trust your team, when you go back out and they tell you the car’s fine, you go out and push,” Winterbottom said.

“He would’ve done that, but that’s the desperation of The Finals. Normally you wouldn’t send your car out, you lick your wounds, you qualify where you do, you salvage your result and turn up on Sunday and go again.

“Desperation of Finals puts pressure on drivers and teams, and unfortunately, DJR got it wrong on Saturday, it was a flow-on from Friday’s mistake that caused the pressure."

Seven drivers remain in The Finals heading to the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 on November 14-16. Tickets on sale now.