Expert Analysis: The shock of wild NZ climax, 2026's standout drivers revealed
This is an exclusive post-event Supercars.com column by championship-winning Race Engineer Scott Sinclair. Sinclair will preview and debrief each round of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship from his own perspective.
A fairytale denied, a championship trio emerging, a rookie's first win, and an incident that had everyone talking. Ruapuna has certainly earned its place on the Supercars calendar.
It’s never over until the chequered flag
Many years ago when I was engineering at Walkinshaw Racing, we were running first and second at Townsville with 10 laps to go when a new team member, with evidently not much motorsport experience, wandered up to the engineering station and said: "How good is this, it's like time-on in the fourth quarter, we can't lose it from here."
It certainly made for a tense last 10 laps but fortunately on that occasion disaster didn't strike. Ryan Wood wasn't so lucky. After having nearly two hands on the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy, his engine decided to give way.
The fairytale of another Kiwi driver winning this prestigious trophy was just about complete when with 12 minutes of racing to go, the motorsport gods struck and cruelly denied Wood.
As devastating as it was, the unpredictability of motorsport is also what makes it so good. It's literally never over until the chequered flag waves.
Teams pushed to the limit
The ITM NZ Double Header also pushed the teams and their equipment to the limit, resulting in an increased number of pit lane mistakes and failures across the weekend.
The combination of an extra race, fatigue from being on the road for two events, and having to work from a shipping container instead of the usual luxury of the modern-day race transporter would've all been contributors.
Kostecki’s dust storm
As well as the teams, we saw some drivers pushed to the limit, most notably in the final race incident between Brodie Kostecki and Chaz Mostert. I won't dive into the rights and wrongs, but I can summarise it from an impartial fan's perspective. Put simply: how good was it!
The cream is rising to the top
Wood's misfortune aside, three standout drivers have emerged as we approach half distance in the Repco Sprint Cup. After 13 races, Broc Feeney, Matt Payne and Brodie Kostecki are separated by only 46 points, making it the tightest top three we've seen in the Gen3 era to this point of the championship.
Yet they've all got here with different traits. Feeney has the best race finishing average and Kostecki has won the most races, while Payne has had the fastest car in both qualifying and race trim. If I had to choose one of those traits at this stage of the year, I'd take Payne's car speed. But Feeney and Kostecki still have time to improve their speed before the business end of the season.
The next group of drivers, consisting of Ryan Wood, Kai Allen and Cam Waters, all have varying strengths too but are lacking around 0.20 seconds/lap compared to the lead trio. If they can unlock more consistent speed, they'll quickly jump into serious contention.
Allen's season reset
That said, Kai Allen certainly had speed in Ruapuna, claiming not only his first career race win and two second places, but also more points across the weekend than anyone else, effectively winning the round. That catapulted him from 11th to fifth in the championship.
Taking a wider view, his season results have been mixed, though he is ranked fourth for Race Pace so far, a considerable improvement from his 10th ranking last year. He has also made significant gains in his tyre degradation ranking, improving from 18th last year to be currently ranked sixth.
Like teammate Payne, Allen has shown excellent car speed, but Ruapuna was the first time he converted it into results. Tasmania will be a great test of his and the team's improvement in the last 12 months given he wasn't particularly strong there last year.
Erebus show signs of life
It was good to see Erebus more competitive over the weekend in Christchurch. Jobe Stewart scored a couple of career-first top 15 qualifying results and teammate Cooper Murray had a season-best race result (ninth) and round result (15th). During the race on Sunday, Murray also did eight consecutive laps within 0.1 sec — the most we've seen from anybody so far this season. That's difficult to do without some confidence in the car beneath you.
Scott Sinclair is one of the most respected voices in pit lane, famously engineering James Courtney to the 2010 championship with Dick Johnson Racing. Sinclair also spent stints at the Holden Racing Team and Kelly Racing, spent time on the Supercars Commission, and recently joined Supercars as a data analyst.
The views in this article do not necessarily express the opinions of Supercars, teams or drivers.
