Brodie Kostecki never lost faith after brake change calamity
Co-driver Todd Hazelwood reflects on wild emotional rollercoaster
DJR pair won Bathurst 1000 after Anton De Pasquale ran out of fuel
Not even a slow brake change with 46 laps remaining could diminish Brodie Kostecki's belief that he could win the 2026 Repco Bathurst 1000.
The #17 Shell V-Power Racing Ford looked to have it in the bag, boosted substantially by Todd Hazelwood's strong double stint in the middle of the day, only for one bolt to derail everything.
A comfortable five-second lead, turned into a 30-second deficit having tumbled back to fifth place. A metaphorical mountain to climb in addition to the physical one.
Yet, as true champions do, Kostecki found a way. Not just any way, but a methodical, ruthless, and barnstorming way, claiming his and Todd Hazelwood's second Bathurst win.
When asked if he thought all hope was gone, Kostecki responded: "Not necessarily gone, every year here there's always a late race Safety Car.
"I knew that we could get ourselves back in the fight. Tom [Moore, engineer] kept me focused and I said, 'Just give me the deltas to the leaders, the effective gaps, and just keep me focused.'
"He did that, gave me all the information that I needed to do the job, and put us in a good situation that we had a good tyre delta at the end.
"But the car was just an absolute rocket ship today. Honestly, on this Mountain you can just never count yourself out, Paul Morris has always told me lap 161, you have to be there to win it."
Watching on helplessly in the Dick Johnson Racing garage, Hazelwood wasn't so sure that the fightback was on.
However, when the Safety Car was called with just five laps to go, Kostecki all of a sudden became a genuine contender once again, armed with a massive tyre delta on Zach Bates and Anton De Pasquale.
Kostecki picked off a valiant Bates, with Hazelwood and engineer Tom Moore listening intently to Team 18's desperate pleas for De Pasquale to save fuel.
Hazelwood prayed to any deity that would listen. Sure enough, the Bathurst Gods answered.
"I have never cheered so hard for a Safety Car in my life, I'm not gonna lie," quipped Hazelwood.
"The whole garage just absolutely went ballistic when the Safety Car got called, because we knew we had a tyre advantage, we knew there was only a handful of laps remaining.
"I was kind of thinking, 'Man, if only there was 10 laps to go after the Safety Car, that would be perfect,' but the intensity in that last stanza of the race...
"Watching Brodie wheel the thing, and then that intense battle with Will, and we all know Bathurst is pretty crazy when everyone is fighting for glory in those last couple of laps of the race.
"It was pretty wild scenes in the garage, there was a lot of cheering, there was a lot of words getting thrown around the room obviously cheering Brodie on.
"Tom and I were both intensely listening to the Team 18 radio, and I couldn't really believe what I was hearing, I was thinking, 'Come on..' just looking up above thinking, 'Come on just give us something.'
"Pretty cool moment in the team, and obviously once Brodie got into the lead at Turn 2 there, the whole garage just erupted and went absolutely berserk.
"I'm looking forward to watching that back, because it's a pretty special moment. This race, I tell you what, it doesn't matter if there's one Safety Car, there's always a script. It always finds a way to create a pretty cool story."
