Thank goodness for Greg Murphy’s presence on the Australian Supercars TV media team over the Bathurst 1000 weekend. The four-rime Bathurst winning icon speaks with confidence and authority and he’s not afraid to give an opinion while others can be more guarded in what they say.
Bathurst always delivers and for 2026 it took until the last five laps for the excitement levels to be raised to a traditional high level.
Up until that time, there were a lot of adjectives used by commentators to try and raise that level of excitement. The fact is, up until the very end, this Great Race was heading to become the Mundane Race of the decade (or longer). What Supercars is currently sadly lacking is a Shane van Gisbergen or a Scott McLaughlin. In other words, Supercars lacks a Superstar!
The nearest it has would be 2026 Bathurst winner Brodie Kostecki!
Kostecki has huge potential but is not a marketer’s dream! I really like him as he is not just a superb driver but he is himself. And there within lies a problem. Supercars need a star now, whereas Kostecki will be big but it will take time for more people to warm to who he is.
Back to the 2026 race around Mount Panorama. What it needed was for Kostecki to take his fourth consecutive pole position in the Top Ten Shootout, and that didn’t happen.
What it got was Matt Stone Racing’s rookie driver Zach Bates setting the quickest lap. What it then needed was for Bates and co-driver Aaron Seton to win on Sunday.
What it got was a flat race for approximately 155 laps, high drama in the closing laps with Kostecki’s stunning pass on Will Brown. Both then passed Zach Bates knocking him out of podium contention; the first safety car being deployed after Chaz Mostert hit the wall, then race leader Anton De Pasquale running out of fuel on the final lap as they headed up to the Mount Panorama climb. This allowed Kostecki’s #17 Shell V-Power DJR Ford Mustang to cross the line for victory.
After the dramatic race conclusion, there was much emphasis on the mountain (Panorama) deciding the fate of those that dare to line up for the great race.
Rubbish! In life and in racing, you make your own luck and there was plenty of examples of this on show during the 161 laps.
While winner Brodie Kostecki lost time in a late pitstop, he then put himself in a position to maximize any opportunities that unfolded in the last eleven laps. These opportunities can come about because others make, or don’t make their own luck.
De Pasquale ran out of fuel because his team made a mistake (and not the mountain). Period!
As a rookie, Bates arguable lacked the experience to stay ahead of both Kostecki and Brown – he shouldn’t have allowed two cars to get by at the same time!
Last year’s winner, Matt Payne, finished fifth and should have been in the hunt for another Bathurst trophy. However, he was hit by two penalties – a five second infringement for squeezing David Reynolds off the road and a drive through pitlane infringement – that should never have happened. While his car was off the pace all weekend and it was only the second time this season he had qualified outside the top eight, the question is without these penalties, could he have finished on the podium?
Where was Ryan Wood, who also has the potential of being a Supercars Superstar? Well, his crash in Practice 3 on Friday morning determined his luck for the rest of the weekend, having clipped the inside wall at Forrest’s Elbow just over halfway through the 60-minute session, which fired him into the outside concrete. It was a ‘push-lap’ on a set of new ‘green tyres’ and a driver’s mistake, one that the team never really recovered from finishing 24th.
Where his Walkinshaw TWG Racing team made their luck was in making sure his ailing car finished the race, thus securing a place in the all-important 2026 Repco Supercars Finals Series.
As Greg Murphy has said, “It’s very, very challenging, very difficult to even try and put money on or predict what’s going to happen. I never expect anything because the race decides what it’s going to offer on the day.”
From there it is the drivers who determine their own luck and Brodie Kostecki did just that.
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