'Means nothing': Kostecki stays grounded after storming to early lead

After one of the most dominant weekends of his Supercars career, Brodie Kostecki isn't holding his breath over taking an early championship lead in Melbourne.

The Shell V-Power Racing Team driver won three of four races at Albert Park, claimed a second Larry Perkins Trophy, and took the championship lead.

Kostecki became the fourth different driver to lead the points in seven races, after Triple Eight's Broc Feeney, Team 18's Anton De Pasquale and Penrite Racing's Matt Payne.

Where Feeney, Payne and De Pasquale all left Melbourne scratching their heads, Kostecki made a major statement in the famous #17 Ford, opening up a 28-point lead over Cam Waters heading to New Zealand.

The form was genuine, per Supercars data analyst Scott Sinclair: "Brodie Kostecki’s competitiveness throughout the entire weekend was my biggest takeaway from his dominant Albert Park performance. Not since his 2023 championship-winning year has Kostecki been on the podium multiple times in the same weekend."

Kostecki himself, however, isn't reading too much into his early lead, bluntly claiming it "almost means nothing" at this stage of the season.

"It definitely helps with a bit of momentum going into the New Zealand double header, but it's so early in the year to even talk about championship, like it almost means nothing to a point," Kostecki said post-race.

"It's definitely exciting times for everyone in the team, I think it's the first time they've led the championship in probably four years or so.

"It's fantastic and I can't wait to celebrate with the whole team when we go back after this and head back to the workshop and we can really enjoy how good of a weekend we had

"But there's still plenty of work to be done. You're always trying to better yourself and there's a lot of things we can do better as well, so we'll go back and do our homework and try go into the New Zealand doubleheader and do the same thing hopefully."

Supercars legend Craig Lowndes was also full of praise, but insisted Kostecki needs to keep his form going: "It’s a long year, and he needs to keep that momentum and he needs to keep focused. The team needs to keep pushing him along. He’s the form driver at the moment, and could he hard to stop."

For what it's worth, three of the last four Larry Perkins Trophy winners went on to win the championship, with the outlier — Will Brown in 2025 — finishing second.

While the #17 Mustang was class of the field, Kostecki still needed to piece together a smart weekend to get the job done. Notably, he was sick in the car during Thursday qualifying, and raced from the front to narrow defeated Payne on Thursday and Friday.

Crucially, while racing from behind, he was aware of Broc Feeney's games and used quick-thinking to avoid penalty in a clash on Saturday, before forcing Brown into a mistake on Sunday.

All told, in a performance that should send a big warning to his rivals, Kostecki was able to execute in multiple scenarios, and bring home big points where others missed out.

"I've said this many times, I felt like we had a lot of momentum going into the season," said Kostecki, who struggled for consistency throughout 2025 and was eliminated from the Finals on the Gold Coast.

"We've been quietly confident and just needed to focus on ourselves and execute and we did all that this weekend, which has been great.

"To deliver three race wins this weekend, four podiums, is fantastic and to get the LP Trophy again as well is awesome."

The 2026 Supercars resumes on April 10-12 in Taupō, where DJR has recorded five podiums in the last two visits to the North Island circuit.