How insane Bathurst climax unfolded from DJR garage

Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood might well have taken the most turbulent path to a Bathurst victory ever seen.

There were engine changes, gearbox changes, and to top it all off, a bungled late brake change that looked for all money to have been the final nail in the coffin. The biggest hurdle could well have come several days before any of that.

That could've been the hurdle that was publicly announced on the Tuesday before Bathurst, Kostecki's championship and Bathurst winning engineer would not be in attendance through injury.

While some teams would struggle for a ready made replacement, Dick Johnson Racing had the best man for the job in Team Manager Tom Moore.

But even a man of Moore's experience and stature could barely believe what had happened at the end of 161 laps, as Kostecki motored past Anton De Pasquale's spluttering Camaro on the final lap.

"It's a bit weird, lots of disbelief in the afternoon," Moore told Supercars.com.

"I probably didn't believe that we were that fast, and then didn't believe that we'd try and throw it away that badly, and then didn't believe that we'd got back in the situation we did."

After yet another sublime Bathurst performance by Hazelwood early, DJR looked to be running away with it when Kostecki made his penultimate stop on lap 125, the team electing to change brakes for the final dash home.

It was a high risk move given the time loss if it went wrong, and sure enough Kostecki plummeted from first to fifth, and looked to be out of it.

Yet, Kostecki put the hammer down, and Moore bringing his charge in with just 11 laps to go for a final all-out attack, eliminating the risk of blistering rear tyres that had been a problem all day throughout the field.

Sure enough, when Chaz Mostert crashed at Forrest's Elbow with five laps to go, the late stop swung wildly back in his favour. Zach Bates was disposed of after one lap, and that pass the will go down in history.

"I just put my head in my hands I think, because we knew they were fuel saving before the Safety Car, and then when the Safety Car happened it was like, 'Oh they'll be fine now, they would've saved enough,'" admitted Moore.

"And then, after the Safety Car stopped it was like, 'Ooh, something has gone wrong.'

"The garage sort of erupted at that point, and I just sort of stopped."

Commins, recovering from his injuries sustained in a mountain bike accident, took the time to congratulate Moore on his role in the performance, though the former race engineer turned full-time Team Manager was quick to credit Commins' work in the lead up.

"Yeah, I just talked to him on the phone for a while then, he was very complimentary," Moore added.

"I said congratulations to him, he did all the prep work before the event, so it was pretty easy for me to just come in, follow the session plans, and make the set-up changes and talk on the radio, and that was it.

"It's pretty cool. It was probably unexpected at the start of the week... or, I don't know. All the ingredients were there to win, there was no reason we couldn't win.

"We've got the car, the driver, the team, it was just executing on the day really. It probably hasn't sunk in fully yet, but it probably will in the next week or so."