Kostecki & Hazelwood win 2024 Bathurst 1000

Reigning Supercars champion Brodie Kostecki has taken his first victory of 2024 in the biggest race of all, joining forces with Todd Hazelwood to win the Bathurst 1000.

Kostecki and Hazelwood dominated large periods of the fastest ever edition of The Great Race, completing 1000 kilometers of racing in less than six hours, the race time stopping at 5 hours, 58 minutes, and 3 seconds.

For both drivers, the Bathurst 1000 victory is their first, with Hazelwood’s best result of eighth coming in 2021, while Kostecki was agoningly close against Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway last year, finishing as runner-up in his championship-winning season.

Today, they become the 65th and 66th drivers to taste success in The Great Race.

“I can’t believe it. This guy did a stellar job,” Kostecki said of Hazelwood.

“The whole weekend I knew we had a fast car. George tuned it up towards the end there, and we just had enough to stay in front of Broc.

“Thank you to the whole team.”

The win was also Hazelwood’s first in Supercars.

“Unbelievable,” he said on the broadcast as Kostecki met the chequered flag. “I think I’m hallucinating. I’m just absolutely speechless. Bush, he’s an absolute legend. We’ve been mates since day one. To do this together with him, absolute rocketship of a car.

“It’s been a tough year, but man, when you win Bathurst it makes up for everything. Incredibly proud.”

Broc Feeney secured his first Bathurst podium as runner-up, partnering four-time winner and Triple Eight Team Principal Jamie Whincup, who steps onto the Mount Panorama podium for the eighth time, and the first time since 2013.

Feeney was jumped by a fast-starting Richie Stanaway at Griffins Bend on Lap 1, but returned serve at the same place on Lap 9 to take the position back.

The faster of the two Red Bull entries matched the early pace of Kostecki, who had leapt clear from pole at the green flag, and then Hazelwood over the opening stints, but lost ground from Lap 60, when Kostecki put the hammer down and extended the advantage beyond 10 seconds.

The gap between the pair fluctuated over a relatively tame opening three-quarters of the race, which suddenly burst to life when Matt Payne’s race ended in the wall at The Cutting on Lap 132.

Payne had run a strong race until the incident, bouncing back from a sluggish start to feature in the top ten until his incident, which brought the race’s sole Safety Car and triggered a 27-lap sprint to the flag.

With all margins eliminated, Feeney put the pressure back on Kostecki on the run to the flag, but was ultimately never in a position to make a move to take the position, leaving him forced to finish in second.

Championship leader Will Brown and Scott Pye completed the podium after running a lonely race in third. They lacked the pace to match it with the top two, but were strong enough to keep a duo of fast Mustangs behind. At one point, Pye sat over 20 seconds behind Feeney, but had built a gap of over six seconds on the field.

Cam Waters and James Moffat were the first Mustang pairing home in fourth, with Waters bouncing back from an early visit down the Turn 1 escape road, which dropped him from third to ninth. There was also a nervous moment for Moffat, who was forced to take the small escape road over Skyline and was forced to slow adbruptly to avoid the wall at The Esses, the same location where he crashed last year.

Chaz Mostert and Lee Holdsworth climbed from ninth to finish fifth, less than one-tenth of a second behind the Monster Energy Mustang, having survived Lap 23 contact with the Boost Mobile-backed wildcard entry of Matt Chada and Brad Vaughan.

The collision, which came shortly after the #118 Camaro had two off-track ventures, first at The Chase and the at Hell Corner, saw Mostert put his nose up the inside of Vaughan at Forrest’s Elbow as he put him a lap down. The cars came together at the apex, and the wildcard entry ended in the wall, taking significant damage to the front.

Vaughan returned to pit lane under his own power, but the team lost over a dozen laps for repairs. They ultimately came home 25th, as the last finishers.

Richie Stanaway, who was a strong starter and battled towards the front all race, looked set to finish sixth with Dale Wood until the final lap, when the #26 Penrite Racing entry ran out of gas.

Stanaway lost over 10 seconds as he coasted through the last lap, which allowed James Golding, who partnered David Russell, to take sixth.

Anton De Pasquale and Tony D’Alberto also benefitted, climbing to seventh, despite encountering issues in pit lane early in the race.

Jack Le Brocq and Jayden Ojeda made for two Erebus entries in the top ten in eighth, ahead of Stanaway and Wood, with the reigning Bathurst champion’s reward for a weekend of strong pace coming in the form of a top ten result.

Cameron Hill and Cameron Crick completed the top ten.

The all-Kiwi pairing of Ryan Wood and Fabian Coulthard finished 15th and were unlucky to miss out on a better result, with Wood running off on the Hell Corner escape road while on a charge into the top ten following the restart. He then struggled to get the car into reverse, costing the entry several places.

Andre Heimgartner and Declan Fraser bounced back from early dramas to finish 16th, while Jaxon Evans and Dean Fiore ran a quiet race for 20th, the last car on the lead lap.

Brown’s podium extends his advantage in the Driver’s Championship to 204 points, with Feeney leapfrogging Mostert into second. Mostert is 21 points behind in third.

Payne’s DNF only costs him one place, and he drops from fifth to sixth and remains as the top Kiwi.

The Supercars Championship returns in two weeks for the Gold Coast 500, before the season-finale in Adelaide on November 14-17.

2024 Bathurst 1000 Results

Header Image: Erebus Motorsport