Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Darwin Triple Crown daily: Sunday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Sunday edition of the daily podcast from the 2026 Better Darwin Triple Crown. My name is Andrew Van Loon and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, another long, hot day at Hidden Valley, ⁓ but a pretty interesting one and a newsy one that started pretty much from the moment we ⁓ we woke up this morning. Yeah, some incredible stories today. Obviously, some unfortunate ones with a couple of drivers unable to compete, but that Created some incredible stories of some late call-ups and then ⁓ some really interesting stories with our winner as well of the race and the Darwin Triple Crown. Yeah, let's start with the winner of the race. That was Anton D. Pasquale for team 18. ⁓ some pretty slick work in the pits got him ahead of Cam Waters at the time, was it? ⁓ yeah, in the first round of stops. And once in front, ⁓ he stayed there. He came under some pressure from Matt Payne late in in the race that pressure had kind of dissipated a bit even before a late safety car, which sealed the win because the race did finish behind the safety car. we we kind of expected the Chefs to go reasonably well at Hidden Valley. We know that team eighteen has enjoyed success there before, but still like an important win for a manufacturer that has been under the pump and under fire a bit this year. Absolutely a great win for Chevy and Team 18, but also for the sport really when you look at the bigger picture. But we did expect Team Eighteen to go well here. They've kind of been all over the map during the weekend. Anton said this evening that he felt like he'd driven three different cars across the weekend because Friday they were good in quality, not so good in the race. Obviously, then on the other tyre they were terrible in quality yesterday, but he drove through in the race and he said today they had a fair swing at it. They didn't just go back to what they had on Friday for this tire. Yeah. ⁓ they had a crack and they turned up with a fast car. They executed a great strategy. And Anton, as he tends to do when he's out in clean air, just drove it brilliantly. Yep, he definitely did. There was a fair bit of Schaden Freud sort of ⁓ emanating from the teammate in Garage and from Charlie Schwerkold, the team owner in particular at the end of that race, obviously, because it was only a few weeks ago that Mark Scafe was on Motor Racing three sixty. Saying in no uncertain terms that they are not a proper factory team. And ⁓ yeah, Charlie enjoyed that one and anyone that could get a ⁓ a recorder anywhere near him after the race, he was very quick to say, Geez, I really wish Mark Scape had been here to see this. Yeah, so Charlie actually brought that up with you. It wasn't a question that you'd load. No, no. I ⁓ did ask Adrian Burgess about it as well in the press conference. ⁓ and his his line was I don't think he being Marks Gaif knows the address of the factory, let alone anything in it. So ⁓ he was pretty pointed on it as well. But ⁓ yeah, so some pretty sweet ⁓ sweet times for those guys. A very good weekend for Matt Payne and for Grove Racing as well. They didn't get the win today, but ⁓ Matt is really closing in on Brock Feeney. I think it's only fifteen points behind Brock Feeney in the championship now. ⁓ and Grove Racing has overtaken Triple Eight in the teams championship. That happened yesterday, right? Yes. Yeah. So and they've they've held on to that today. So they will go to Townsville with the number one garage spot. Bit of a slow pit stop for Matt Payne in that race. What sort of effect did that have on the outcome? It's always difficult to say, isn't it? Because he lost to whatever time he lost a couple of seconds there, but You can't necessarily extrapolate that to saying that he would have been further down the road or ahead of Anton at the finish. Yeah, Brenton Grove was pretty sharp on the fact that it cost him the win today. And yeah, it was just critical to keep that track position over Cam Waters, really. So it felt like Matt pulled two winning moves during the race where he passed Cam twice, but they actually just got out foxed there by team eighteen and couldn't get the track position back. 'Cause really the story of the races were that it was all about the track position and you just overheating the front tire if you sit behind someone for too long. So it felt like Matt really deserved at least one win across the weekend. Yeah. And Brenton Grove, I mean those guys they have really high standards these days. So yeah, he said what happened today in the pits was unacceptable. ⁓ and that he actually made a point of saying Matt is being very kind to us in his comments about how it unfolded because he has every right to be right to be frustrated. There was some sort of irony about ⁓ Matt Payne finishing second to a Team 18 car, obviously, with all the stuff that's been going on with the with the this push to try and get him to go across to that team. ⁓ It was incredible to have Matt sitting in the press conference with Brenton on one side, Adrian Burgess literally rubbing shoulders on the other side, and then his manager, Michael Patrizzi. in the ⁓ actually in the press ⁓ seats as well. I wasn't in the press. I would have thought I would have thought ⁓ Michael might have been just pacing up up at the back, just wondering who was gonna ⁓ to ask what ⁓ when all of that was ⁓ was going on there. let's have a chat about triple eight's weekend because it was good. It was decent but it wasn't triple eight at Darwin. Like that's not what we expect from them. And even with the manufacturer change It just wouldn't have been surprising to see Brock Feeney go out there and dominate all weekend and that just wasn't the case at all. And then they had this little bit of awkwardness at the end of the race there, ⁓ where Brock let Will Brown go to try and chase after Cam Waters. Well Brock had already had a go at Cam by that point, right? And they sure did, yeah. Yeah, they made contact and had to ⁓ he had to redress that position and then ⁓ It ended up that Will was on the quicker tie strategy at the end of the race, let him through to give him a crack at camp with the plan that if he didn't get him, they would swap those positions back. But then along came the safety car and they were stuck in the positions they were in. And Jamie Winkamp said on the broadcast afterwards that ⁓ Brock was fuming about that, ⁓ and that they'd debrief it. But I imagine it would be a pretty small part of the debrief there because that that just happens right. That's that's the risk of Well you can't you can't be upset with the team. The safety car came out, you can't. Exactly. So they've got a lot more to debrief than that, obviously, because as you say, it was a very uncharacteristic weekend. They're basically the fourth best forward team for most of it. ⁓ Brock actually said to me this evening that he felt like they rolled out pretty well on Friday. Yeah. And then just every change they made for the next day and a half went backwards. Yeah. There was also some stuff going on with brakes and that's partly related then with the straight line complaints that that he was having for a fair bit of the weekend. So yeah, a bit to look at. Absolutely. that late safety car did come courtesy of an engine failure in Chaz Mostett's Toyota. ⁓ a pretty spectacular engine failure, actually. Well, Chaz told us he was just doing a burnout to celebrate Anton's win. That's right. Well, Anton didn't do one. He was told over the radio we don't need these rear tires. And then ⁓ we couldn't quite get a straight answer out of him as to why he didn't. But I think he felt it might have just been the way that Phil was kind of bunched up with the safety car. 'Cause he was talking about the fact there was another car there or whatever. But don't you start making excuses for him. I feel like there's other drivers there that would have ripped a pretty good skid. 'Cause he gave us two excuses. One, he can't afford the parts. Yeah. And then the other was that Will Brown was in the way. Yeah. So he was really grasping there. Yeah. Anyway, so at least we did get some ⁓ a bit of a smoke show from Chaz Moscut ⁓ when his engine ⁓ dropped a valve. obviously worrying because this is not the first time This has happened and we saw Ryan Wood with that issue ⁓ in New Zealand that cost him the Jason Richards trophy. At least this time Ryan Walker said on the T V straight away, yeah, the engine blew. Which obviously we could all see ⁓ yeah, at ⁓ Rapuna was it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They ⁓ sort of try to shrug it off as a censor, but we know they've got this issue. You spoke to Carl Foe, yeah, the team principal after the race. What's what's going on with Well ⁓ the thing is so ⁓ Once the car got back to the garage, they were actually there was a whole bunch of people and Craig Hastead, Supercar's engine man, and and a few other people were there having a really good look ⁓ at that engine. And I spoke to Carl after that and he said the you know, not ⁓ he said it's it's kind of a relief because it is the the known problem that we have. It's not a new problem that we've discovered and we go, ⁓ great, now we've got something else to go and fix. It's a known problem. They have a solution for it. It's just a case of getting the parts manufactured. So it's something it's obviously in the valve train. ⁓ these these engines have a habit of dropping valves. We had Andre Heimgartner had that issue with the City Motorsport Park at the start of the season. So they had two of these in testing as well. Yeah. So it's a known engine. ⁓ sorry. It's a known problem, but it's not necessarily a fast solution because you obviously have to manufacture all the bits and enough for Every team to have a a race engine and a spare engine and all that sort of stuff. So I think the plan is to and and obviously logistically it's a this is a tough point in the season to be trying to problem solve things like that because there's the trip to Darwin, really tight turnaround to go to Townsville. Then the next one's Perth. So it's all kind of there's a lot of sort of trav traveling involved and you don't necessarily have all hands on deck. So ⁓ there's a big red circle around Bathurst in the calendar to ensure that all of the Toyotas are upgraded to The new spec. ⁓ by the time they get to that race, it'll obviously get phased in on some cars between now and then. ⁓ but that's the target to ensure that this issue that causes these valves to drop is is is gone. They'll need to be phasing it in a little earlier than Bathis. Supercars are not gonna let them change something so significant right on the end of the race. No, no, I I think it'll be it will be the homologation change will be done well before that. It's just a case of actually rolling The changes out because and you've also when you look at the logistics of these things, you've also all of these motors have to go to Queensland to go on Supercars Dino and be ⁓ and to be sealed by by Craig as well. So there's you know, it's not these things just take time. And part of the work in the first place is going on in the UK because Wind and Powertrains is their engine partner for this programme. So that would be part of all the logistics as well. Yeah, let's have a chat about some surprise cameos today, because as we flagged at the top of the show, it wasn't our regular twenty-four drivers taking part in the race. ⁓ Todd Hazelwood stood in for Brody Kastecki, who of course was quite well, he came into the weekend carrying a virus. ⁓ he was in a pretty bad way the end of the race yesterday, didn't take part in the podium celebrations or any of the post-race media commitments, went to the medical center, was on a drip. This morning he received medical clearance initially, but then a decision was taken to put Todd Hazelwood in that car. Do you know who actually made the decision there? Do you? No. No. But he had clearance. But you know, it could be a case ⁓ of Brody having just decided that he didn't feel up for it. And I guess the interesting question here is, is that a different decision in the pre finals era? Where you are scrapping for points in terms of your final championship finishing position, as opposed to going, Look, we're gonna be in the ten. Give the co driver some laps. Could be handy later on. I don't know. I'm not I'm not gonna take the conspiracy that far, but I think for a driver in Brody's position, there is the freedom to say, Do I really need to put myself at risk here? Or can I actually begin the recovery before Townsville now? ⁓ and put Todna car. A lot different, unfortunately, to Thomas Randall's position because he's ⁓ now fourteenth in points and a fair way from the cut line, so it really hurt him today. But before we move on to Tickford, Todd Hazelwood, he did a bloody good job, didn't he? Yeah, that was unreal. In both qualifying. ⁓ and you know, that was a big he'd just jumped out of the Transam car, which I think the fact he'd race Transam was fundamentally an advantage, right? 'Cause he'd been racing all weekend. ⁓ but the cars are very different. So Even though he was he was still in a better position than Mark Winterbottom was coming into that race because he'd spent the whole weekend racing. So ⁓ he jumped out of the Transam car, jumped straight into the supercar and ⁓ did a fantastic job. ⁓ he outqualified Roland Gray and he beat Roland Gray in the race. ⁓ even though he was battling a a clutch issue in the race. And that's ⁓ that's pretty impressive against I know Roland's a rookie, but he's a full time supercar driver and Todd Hazelwood isn't. And Roland did the Hidden Valley round last year as well with ticket, so We sort of said to each other this morning that it's a ⁓ it was a no win day for Ryland. Really when you look at it. ⁓ he probably should have been ahead of Todd and he wasn't. Yeah, because it's forgivable that he's not out there beating Brody Castehy week in, week out, but you I I think he would have wanted to be ahead of someone subbing in who's not racing supercars full time. Even though Todd is obviously incredibly experienced and very fast, but Yeah, it's not really about what we think about it, it's what it does actually for Ryland's confidence 'cause it can't be helping that. Yeah. And then there was the Tickford scenario, ⁓ Tommy Randall suffered that cool suit failure on the warm up lap of yesterday's race and again was in a pretty bad way at the end of the race. He didn't go on a drip ⁓ to rehydrate ⁓ yesterday evening. he apparently felt pretty good this morning, jumped in the car for qualifying but just didn't feel right. in the car. he was when I interviewed him on Saturday evening, he was definitely sort of not his usual eloquent self in terms of like sort of pausing sentences, sort of having to keep gathering his thoughts as he was trying to explain the ordeal that he'd been through. and ⁓ we were chatting with Simon Brookhouse, the Tickford CEO today, and he said he just sort of felt a bit sort of foggy, like it just his brain just couldn't quite engage to the level that you want it to when you're driving a racing car in a professional racing series. So ⁓ he went for medical treatment after qualifying. ⁓ he then did go on a drip. I think that Supercars Medical didn't sign off on him to race, but by that point the team had already decided that this wasn't happening and they were already talking to Supercars and Motorsport Australia about what do we do next. Who can we put in this car? Yeah, I think there needs to be a bit of more of a conversation around and Look at these heat rules after this weekend because it is scary with what the heat does to these drivers and it's not like an injury that you can diagnose this and then the recovery time is that. It's ⁓ it's a little bit more grey than that. So that's probably it's in a way a bit like concussion, obviously entirely different, but in terms of the fact that the effects can linger on a little bit and you can think that you're fine, but then suddenly find out in the wrong moment that you're not, if that makes sense. Yeah. So the ⁓ the Mark Winterbottom story was incredible. And actually on Thursday we just passed each other in the paddock and obviously the sun was beating down and it was thirty whatever degrees and I just briefly said to to Frosty, probably a good weekend to be a commentator rather than a racing car driver. Yeah. And he goes, ⁓ I don't know. I kinda like racing cars. I've got my helmet just in case And I was like, ⁓ right ⁓ mate. Yeah. And we just pressed on and I didn't think of it again until ⁓ about one o'clock this afternoon. When he was dragging the helmet out. The the funny thing is, because I think he made a comment on the TV as well about the fact that he leaves his gear in the Tickford truck just in case he's ever needed ⁓ as a stand-in driver. But you'd think on a weekend like this, they've got four Super Two cars there. Yep. And they've got Tommy Randall's co-driver in one of them. So it obviously would have been a fantastic opportunity to give Ruben Goodall a whole heap of laps today, but the timing was just kind of against that decision because As this was unfolding, the Super Two guys were sitting in their cars waiting to roll out for a forty minute race. So A, it would have been a lot of physical strain for someone to do a 40 minute Super Two race and immediately hop in another car and do a 200 kilometer main game race. ⁓ and I think that's ultimately what ⁓ pushed the decision towards Frosty as opposed to Ruben, because again, on the surface, like i if the timetable had been well the schedule had been different and Super Two had race first thing in the morning or something like that would have just been such a golden opportunity to give Ruben laps. It would have been interesting to see if Supercars would have actually signed off on putting Ruben in 'cause it is at their discretion. Yeah. And he's not really done a lot of laps in gen three cars. Yeah. A couple of ride days, one wet test day at the bend or weather affected. Yeah. ⁓ I think it's great that they do allow these late substitutions 'cause it is pretty wild to think that Frosty had not done a lap of that joint until the the outlap to the grid. Yeah, I know, crazy. And really, like he had a tough, tough one. Obviously next time maybe he'd better put his seat insert in the truck. Yeah. 'Cause I think he ⁓ struggled without that. But ⁓ yeah, to see him catching the The pack early on, having started from Pit Lane. He was flying. He was flying. I think that I think there would have been some ergonomic issues because Cam and Tommy set their ⁓ have their seats quite different. It's something that ⁓ some of Tommy's co-drivers have talked about before. He he likes quite a laid-back kind of open. Obviously, his background was open wheel racing, and he kind of has quite a different ⁓ seating position to to what a lot of the other guys do. So I think there was some comfort issues and and obviously Frosty ⁓ stalled it in the pits, which which cost him, but I think he would have finished a f you know, he he would have finished in a pretty credible spot if he was competitive in the field. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So ⁓ I guess it just shows what that wealth of experience really brings. And he's raced at win ⁓ raced at Hidden Valley, you know, he's won at Hidden Valley and and yeah, he didn't look out of place at all. Like he caught the back of the field. Obviously, you know, you're catching cars that are racing each other, but still it was ⁓ it was fun. And another model car for Will Hall to make for authentic collectible systems. Exactly. Yep. That is ⁓ that is very, very true. ⁓ anything else we need to talk about, do you think? One other thing I should bring up because Mark Larkam ⁓ flagged me down in the paddock and wanted me to talk about this. Green white checker finishes. Do we need to adopt the NASCAR style system of ensuring that the races don't finish under safety car? I mean, ideally, yes, right. I mean that's gotta be the answer. I know it's not quite that simple and it's not a problem that we have often. And I know this has come up it was something that Scott Pie flagged either la late last year or or whenever. And it's kind of when it hasn't just happened, you sort of Forget about Yeah, you think, well, this is not w this is not something we need to go through the process of of of implementing. But then when it does happen, you think, Yeah, that's that's nowhere near as fun as a proper finish. And we kinda had that on on Friday night, didn't we? Yeah, we only got a one lap shootout where ideally you'd probably want two. But ⁓ yeah, so it did last year because it there was a race that finished under safety carrot at Ipswich and it actually this suggestion went to the commission ⁓ and it didn't receive majority support. Yeah. ⁓ there's obviously complications when races are time certain, but when that comes in, normally you have a green finish anyway. So even though you have less laps. That's right. Yeah. So the issue is finishing under yellow. ⁓ the teams don't like it because then you'd potentially have to carry more fuel. Well you need a buffer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So when we're talking about this, Larko actually immediately spotted a race engineer and started yelling at him, Would you would you carry the extra fuel in every race through the year? ⁓ if you ⁓ if this rule was in and there was a there was a puzzled look and no no certain answer. But it really pertinent also at the moment because we're seeing teams short fuel in the stops and then force the drivers to save. Yeah. ⁓ save fuel on the run home because just shortening that pit time is so vital again with track position and then worry about it later. So I'm sure we'd see a lot of cars run out of fuel if you added two laps to these races. I think if you did a driver vote right now, the one person who would definitely not vote for it is Anton Di Pasquale because imagine having to phase one or two laps at the end there when ⁓ there's a fair bit of ⁓ Toyota oil at the ⁓ you know around turn one there. And having to arrive there in the lead of the race, not really knowing what line to take, trying to spot that oil ⁓ and trying to win a race. Like ⁓ I think he was I think he was pretty happy to ⁓ to just finish behind the safety car. Well, if it went like it did yesterday, Woody would have been the one that found Chag's oil. Exactly. Exactly. All right, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you for listening to our daily podcast across the Darwin weekend. ⁓ we'll have heaps more news and reaction to everything that happened over the weekend on speedcafe.com ⁓ in the coming days. So make sure you stay tuned to that. And full credit to the noise will be back in this podcast feed on Tuesday morning.