161 laps. More than six hours of racing. And Anton De Pasquale had it won, right up until the car coughed.
The Team 18 Chevrolet ran dry on the very last lap of the Bathurst 1000 2026, on the climb up Mountain Straight. The chequered flag was about 6 kilometres away. Brodie Kostecki didn’t need asking twice. He went straight past and took the win for Dick Johnson Racing, with co-driver Todd Hazelwood.
“Once I knew how much fuel short we were, I knew we were cooked,” De Pasquale said afterwards.
Running on fumes
His last stop? Lap 139. Team 18 pitted him early to go after Zach Bates. That was it, no more stops.
Six laps to go, and his engineer is on the radio. “Maximum fuel save.” Didn’t work.
Co-driver Lee Holdsworth had no idea it was that tight. “I didn’t know we were so close on fuel, I don’t know what’s happened,” he said. “Obviously a massive disappointment, I’ve got no words mate.”
The team hasn’t said what went wrong. And it’s not the first time. Team 18 ran both its cars short on fuel at the 2023 race too.
De Pasquale was gutted, but honest. “We had a really good day, and the chequered flag was 6km away,” he said. The car was “amazing” late in the race, he reckoned. “Everything went our way, until it didn’t.”
Kostecki’s day from hell, then heaven
It wasn’t smooth for the winners either. Kostecki’s second-last pit stop dragged on because of a brake change. That dropped the No. 17 Ford from the lead to fifth.
Then Chaz Mostert binned it at Forrest’s Elbow. Out came the safety car, the only one all day. That bunched the field up again, and Kostecki was back in it.
“We executed so well up until that second-last pit stop with the brake change,” Kostecki said. His take on the rest? Same as always. The mountain “chooses the winner”.
He reckons they had the quickest car out there. “This Ford Mustang was on rails,” he said.
Hazelwood summed it up best. “Explain my emotions? Between the lowest to the extreme highs, all in about 40 seconds.”
Before Mostert’s crash, they’d been “begging for a safety car”, he said. Then they got one. And his teammate? “This guy was absolutely sending it.”
A second Bathurst crown
This is Kostecki’s second Bathurst win. He also won it in 2024, back when he was driving for Erebus. Now he’s done it in a Ford, for one of the most famous names in Australian motorsport.
Dick Johnson himself was loving it. “That’s amazing,” he said. “I tell you what, I want a couple more before I fall off the perch.”
His verdict on the day? “A perfect day except for one bit of a mistake.”
Zach Bates gets his podium
Remember Zach Bates? Record lap on Friday. Dedicated it to his mum, who passed last year. He and co-driver Aaron Seton started from pole.
They finished third. It’s Bates’s first podium in Supercars.
Second went to Will Brown and Scott Pye in the Triple Eight Ford. It got messy at the end, too. Brown got past Bates in the last-lap chaos and shoved him back to fourth for a bit. Then Bates got his podium back. Matt Stone Racing had plenty to smile about, too. Jack Le Brocq and Harri Jones made it two MSR cars in the top four.
Matt Payne won this race last year. This time? Fifth, with Will Davidson. And that’s after copping two penalties in the pits.
And Craig Lowndes? He finished 10th with young Bayley Hall. On the 20th anniversary of Peter Brock’s death, that’s still a respectable afternoon at the office.
Where to from here
Brown and Pye’s second place wasn’t a total loss. They wrapped up the Sprint Cup. That’s worth 25 bonus points going into the finals.
That starts at the Gold Coast 500, from 23 to 25 October. Kostecki will head there with the Peter Brock Trophy in the cabinet.
Team 18 will head there with a lot of questions about a fuel tank. The mountain picked its winner, alright. It just took its sweet time.