De Pasquale overcomes unseen issue in epic charge

A lowly grid spot and a “super hot” throttle pedal couldn’t deny Camaro spearheard Anton De Pasquale delivering one of the drives of the season.

After a disastrous run to 20th in Boost Mobile Qualifying, De Pasquale powered the #18 DEWALT Chevrolet to eighth in the 70-lap race.

The writing was on the wall for De Pasquale when the lights went out, yet he carefully pieced his way through the field to salvage crucial points.

In a matter of hours, De Pasquale went from "like I'm driving around on wets” to gaining 12 positions, finishing just 0.3s behind Broc Feeney.

However, unbeknownst to all was De Pasquale’s plight in the cockpit, with a hot pedal set to encourage a ducting change to his pedal box area.

“Feet getting hot, super hot throttle pedal, so my right foot is still burning a little bit,” De Pasquale said post-race.

“Otherwise feel really good in the car. Car wasn't too bad to drive. Overall, come a long way forward. Just reroute some ducting, otherwise, I feel good.”

Having completely missed the boat in qualifying on Saturday, a day after qualifying second, De Pasquale knew he had to try something in the race.

All told, on a day he could have ceded ground in the Finals race, he instead extended his margin to safety.

“We just took a big shift. We’ve sort of been going down a certain direction, and it caught us out this morning in qualifying, and it didn't like this [Super Soft] tyre and this track,” he continued.

"So, we flipped that on its head. Worst case we're gonna learn something and, and I think we did. So, just trying different things. We're trying to build our bank up still. We're still developing a lot of stuff.

“We're in a pretty good position in the championship, so we still wanna have a big bank come later in the year."

The final day of the betr Darwin Triple Crown begins with Boost Mobile Qualifying at 10:45am local time/11:15am AEST.