Refuelling blunder ends Brodie Kostecki's Sprint Cup hopes
Kostecki denied podium chance with two botched pit stops
#17 Ford also spun by Kai Allen in first Perth race
Another fuel churn error has tumbled Brodie Kostecki out of mathematical Repco Sprint Cup contention, while also costing the 2023 champion what he believes was a strong chance of a podium.
Kostecki looked on course for a home podium when engineer George Commins radioed in to his driver to inform him that there was "no fuel flow" in the first stop, and that "you know what that means."
To further compound matters, the fuel flow issue returned at Kostecki's second stop, though the team was able to empty the fuel churn after a short delay. Kostecki remained in the top five until eight laps from home, when he was forced to make an additional third stop just to make it to the finish.
P12 was still a fine finish despite the additional trip to the pit lane, with Kostecki taking the positives from the strong race pace that he displayed, even if results were hard to come by.
"Not really too sure to be honest, it's pretty hard," said Kostecki post-race, when asked if he knew what caused the fuelling stumble.
"Sometimes if a little bit of fuel just sloshes into the vent in the churn, your stop is basically screwed. A lot to look back on and reflect on, but I was pretty happy with the car pace then for us, but we obviously didn't execute.
"It looks like we've had a shocker on paper, which we did, but the pace was there all weekend. Just missed opportunity to be honest, but regroup and go again for our home track."
The result has officially dropped Kostecki out of Repco Sprint Cup contention, despite running away to an early championship lead through Melbourne, Taupō, and the first three races in Christchurch.
Kostecki is now 360 points behind leader Matt Payne, with 315 points available at the Sprint Cup final in Ipswich, while Allen has closed to within 25 points of Kostecki.
But, having still got more wins than anyone else in the field, Kostecki is still shaping as one of the key title contenders when Finals roll around.
"Yeah definitely, I think this year we've had a shot pretty much everywhere we've gone to, this is probably our first real bad round for us as far as results," Kostecki continued.
"We ran the three-stopper today, which wasn't quite the Ludo Lacroix special three-stopper. We'll go back, and we've got plenty of footage from the pit stop cameras and whatnot, and we'll go through it all.
"We'll see what we can do better, but I'm still proud of everyone, another fast race car again, we should've been fighting for second. I think Matty probably had a little bit on us, but we had plenty of speed today. Just didn't pull it all together."
The Repco Sprint Cup concludes at the Century Batteries Ipswich Super 440 from August 21-23.
