Kostecki and Hazelwood win 2026 Bathurst 1000 after Team 18 fuel heartbreak

Last-lap heartbreak decides the 2026 Great Race

Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood won the 2026 Repco Bathurst 1000 at Mount Panorama on Sunday, October 11, after the leading Team 18 Chevrolet Camaro of Anton De Pasquale and Lee Holdsworth ran out of fuel coming down Mountain Straight on the final lap, as Speedcafe reported in its race coverage. Kostecki took the flag by 1.1844 seconds in the Dick Johnson Racing #17 Ford Mustang ahead of Triple Eight's Will Brown and Scott Pye, with Zach Bates and Aaron Seton third for Matt Stone Racing. ¹

The race had appeared set up for De Pasquale after the pit stop cycles. A problematic right-front brake change during Kostecki's Lap 124 stop cost Dick Johnson Racing 27 seconds and dropped the #17 from first to fifth, while Team 18 spent just 50 seconds on its final stop compared with 15 seconds more for Bates's Matt Stone Racing Camaro, leaving De Pasquale with a lead heading into the closing laps. ¹

Chaz Mostert's heavy crash at Forrest's Elbow in the Walkinshaw TWG Racing Toyota Supra brought out the Safety Car with five laps to go, ending the longest green-flag run in Bathurst 1000 history and setting up a three-lap dash. Kostecki passed Bates at Murray's Corner on the restart, with Brown also getting through, before the fuel failure decided the outcome on the last lap. ¹

Kostecki told Speedcafe's race coverage that the mountain always chooses the winner and described the Mustang as on rails, while acknowledging his team had executed well until the brake change. It is the second Bathurst 1000 win together for Kostecki and Hazelwood after their 2024 triumph with Erebus Motorsport. ¹

Speedcafe's analysis of the Team 18 failure noted the irony that Kostecki and Dick Johnson Racing were the big beneficiaries of the blunder, and observed that the win was DJR's first Bathurst 1000 victory in seven years, coming in its first year since relinquishing Ford homologation team duties. ²

Team 18's fuel investigation and aftermath

Team 18 said in a statement on Tuesday, October 13 that its investigation identified an issue within the team's fuel strategy software, which resulted in the final fuel fill being less than the amount required to finish the race, Speedcafe reported, adding that no staff would be sacked over the error. ²

Speedcafe's analysis of the failure explained that each team writes a pre-race formula into its fuel strategy software to calculate the fuel and nozzle time required at the last stop. It is understood Team 18's final-stint calculator assumed the car had been filled during its penultimate stop, which was not the case because the team had short-filled on Lap 123 to give De Pasquale track position over Brown. ²

According to Speedcafe's analysis, De Pasquale was not told to save fuel until around 10 laps from the finish, with a call for maximum fuel save coming with five laps to go but no specific target given. The late Safety Car appeared to offer a reprieve, but a swift recovery and restart meant the saving fell short, and the analysis noted Car 18's total refuelling time ended approximately three seconds shy of the field average, understood to be the size of the shortfall. ²

A rival team boss told Speedcafe that Team 18's advantage at the head of the race should have resulted in simply brimming the car and still coming out ahead, rather than targeting an exact fuel number. The analysis also noted that the aggressive early final stop left De Pasquale vulnerable to those on fresher tyres at the end, such as ultimate winner Kostecki, following the late Safety Car. ²

Team boss Adrian Burgess fronted the media after the race and, per Speedcafe, owned the mistake and called for the team to support each other. Speedcafe noted the contrast with the aftermath of the 2023 Great Race, when three team members were sacked after both cars were under-filled, and observed that Team 18 did not run a dedicated strategist for the enduros, unlike Dick Johnson Racing. ²

Bates stuns with pole after record qualifying lap

Matt Stone Racing's Zach Bates took pole position for the 2026 Repco Bathurst 1000 in Saturday's Top Ten Shootout, lapping at 2:04.2062s to deny Dick Johnson Racing's Brodie Kostecki a record fourth straight pole by 0.2850s, Speedcafe reported. It was Bates's first Supercars pole position and the team's second, after Jack Le Brocq's at Darwin in 2023. ³

In Friday's qualifying session, Bates had set a 2:03.9376s, the fastest lap of Mount Panorama in the Gen3 era according to Speedcafe, beating Kostecki's previous benchmark of 2:04.0307s and leading a Chevrolet top-three lockout with De Pasquale and Erebus Motorsport's Cooper Murray. Bates dedicated the lap to his mother, Alison Drower, who died of cancer before the previous year's Bathurst 1000. ⁴

Toyota missed the Top Ten Shootout on its first attempt at Bathurst with its new Supra fleet: Speedcafe reported Brad Jones Racing's Andre Heimgartner qualified 15th, six tenths off pole, and no Toyota driver made the top 10. ⁴

Race build-up and early incidents

The 2026 Repco Bathurst 1000 was round 11 of the Repco Supercars Championship, run at Mount Panorama from October 8 to 11, with Sunday's 161-lap race scheduled to start at 11:30am AEDT, 15 minutes earlier than the 2025 edition, per Speedcafe's event guide. The field included a new manufacturer mix after Triple Eight's move to Ford and Walkinshaw TWG Racing and Brad Jones Racing's move to Toyota, with 27 cars entered. ⁶

The build-up included significant practice damage: Speedcafe reported that Ryan Wood clipped the inside wall at Forrest's Elbow and Tony D'Alberto crashed at the Dipper in Friday's Practice 3, the latter ending the session early with just over two minutes remaining. Erebus Motorsport topped that session through Cooper Murray and Lochie Dalton's Camaro at 2:04.7122s, while Grove Racing was reportedly poised to change the engine in the Matt Payne/Will Davison Mustang after discovering a power deficiency relative to its sister entry. ⁵

On race day, the Triple Eight Mustang of Jackson Walls and Jack Perkins pulled into the pits on the warm-up lap with a power steering issue and lost several laps, finishing 15 laps down, while James Moffat's Garry Rogers Motorsport entry was sandwiched between Tony D'Alberto and Nash Morris at The Cutting on the opening lap, forcing a puncture stop; stewards investigated but issued no penalties, Speedcafe reported. ¹

Finals Series field completed

Speedcafe reported that the 2026 Supercars Finals Series field was set after the Bathurst 1000, with Ryan Wood and Jack Le Brocq securing the final two places. Eight drivers, including Matt Payne, Broc Feeney, Kai Allen, Brodie Kostecki, Cameron Waters, Anton De Pasquale, Will Brown and Chaz Mostert, were already locked in prior to the event. ⁷

The two bids contrasted sharply: Wood endured a shocker in his Walkinshaw TWG Toyota, finishing 16 laps down after repairs for accident damage, while Speedcafe's Finals Series field article described Le Brocq's strong run alongside Harri Jones as a fifth-place finish claiming the hotly contested tenth place in the championship context. The two accounts are not resolved against each other in the available reporting. ⁷

There is a discrepancy in Le Brocq's race finish position between the two Speedcafe documents: the Finals Series field article describes a fifth-place finish, while the race report's classified results table places Le Brocq and Harri Jones fourth, 3.0218 seconds behind the winner. The final classification table in the race report is the more precise of the two accounts, but the difference has not been reconciled in the available reporting and both are presented here as published by Speedcafe. ¹⁷

Speedcafe noted the resulting Finals field comprises six Fords, two Chevrolets and two Toyotas. ⁷