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Gold Coast 500 daily: Sunday · Full Credit to the Noise

• Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Sunday edition of our daily podcast from the 2026 Gold Coast 500. My name is Andrew Van Leuren and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, first round of the finals for this season in the books. It wasn't the sort of wild day in terms of the weather that we saw on Saturday, but that was still a pretty wild race in terms of finals implications, controversy and all sorts of stuff like that. Well, last year the final series delivered its controversy right at the death. But it has not waited a single moment to deliver it for it for us this year. And I know you're right into this. So let's let's talk about it. I am, yeah, let's do it. So we'll quickly just run through some of the key stats out of the day. So the podium for the race was Brock Feeney. He was the winner ahead of Brody Kastecki and Chaz Mostett in third place. But most importantly, we do now have our final seven set for the semifin semi-final at Sandown. So Matt Payne will go in as a top seeded driver. Followed by Feeney, Kastechi, Chaz Mostett. He went through courtesy of winning the race yesterday and ended up seeded fourth on points. Will Brandt's fifth, Cam Water sixth, and Anton Di Basquale seventh. That is the flashpoint of controversy for the day. I think we may as well just get into it. If you didn't see it, effectively what happened in the race is that Anton and Ryan Wood were in a kind of seesawing battle for that seventh spot. They were three different permutations. Dipping below or ahead of the cut line. Walk and Shaw did their best to try and get Ryan Wood in by swapping positions with Chaz Mostett, which was a fairly aggressive or optically aggressive thing to do, given the fact that Chaz was 10 seconds down the road at the time. There was a brief moment where that was enough to get Ryan Wood in. Anton Di Pasquale makes up enough spots from the back of the grid. He had an early issue in the race, had to make a first lap stop for a damaged tire. He gets it back to force a tie break. And then mysteriously, two other GMs running in the top ten find themselves needing to pit late in the race for fuel. They were under fueled. And there's the two positions for Anton Di Pasquale that secured his progression to sand down. We're going to go through all the factors of this, Stefan. But firstly, what's your general vibe on it? Well, it was it looked hugely suspicious, right? The the fact. first take on it, the optics as you use the word before, it looked pretty convenient for Chevrolet as a manufacturer, that two of its cars had to pit for fuel and it just happened to put a Chevrolet into the next round of the finals because there wasn't going to be any Chevrolets in it if Anton wasn't in it. So you look at what evidence is there and supercars were pretty quick to come out and say I had the conversation with Tim Edwards that when they drain the fuel out of Cooper Murray's car and Jared Hughes's car, knowing also what they took on in the stops, that those cars wouldn't have made it to the finish without the third pit stop. So that kind of squashes the conspiracy to an extent. But then you can go the further layer and say, did they actually decide earlier, hey, if we do a three stopper in these two cars, that it that'd help Anton, which is a plausible argument But it is a deeper level of conspiracy that can't really be proven. And of course, this has been denied by all parties involved. Yes, which you would expect to be the case as well. Just to fully clarify why we're having this discussion. So when so under the supercars rules, a team orders are allowed as long as it's within one team. So a team can reorder its cars or or do anything or pit one of its cars if it's going to be advantageous to the other car. Absolutely no problem. That is allowed. But what Can't happen is a third party get involved. And the rule is written in a way it mentions, I think it's sponsors and all this other stuff, but it then directly references manufacturers. And that's really what the rule is about. That's what it's built for. It's about not allowing a manufacturer to to deploy cars from other teams to try and help a car from a different team again, if that makes sense. It's something that casts your mind back to the very controversial 2006 season finale at Phillip Island where there was sort of this suspicion about manufacturer games there, something in the DTM, like not so much now in the GT era, but particularly back in the in the touring car era of the DTM, that was very manufacturer centric. The manufacturers had a lot of control over the teams. So the idea was to ensure it was effectively a DTM rule or an anti DTM rule. Let's make sure that that doesn't happen in supercars. That's why we're having this discussion. That's why if it were ever able to be proven that it was a tactical It would be illegal under the rules. Whereas what Walkinshaws was doing, while it's also race manipulation to a certain point, is not actually illegal. And so part of the suspicion, I guess, too, is that the GM alliance that they've created this year where all four of their teams share information, set up data, they work together. We've never really had that before where a manufacturer does align its teams. But Simon McNamara when I spoke to him was certainly adamant that it's only only the data sharing and information when they're off the racetrack and the teams work independently when they're on it. But what was your sort of gut feel on on what you saw? It's a tricky one. There is a a lot of evidence to suggest that it was just a crazy coincidence. like you say, supercars did actually not investigate it but Tim Edwards said to you that he was very quick to make sure like he said they have triggers for when they want to scrutiny cars. And something like that is a trigger, in the same that he talked about the fact there'll be some cars that will have fuel tank capacity checks tonight because they ran longer than supercars expected them to in certain stints. So he certainly didn't hide behind the fact that they drew a they got the red texture out and drew a drew a circle around those cars and went, we're going straight down there to to do the the pump out test on those cars. So There's some evidence that suggests that maybe it was a crazy coincidence. There's I I have a few, like I I I understand, you know, you think about Roland Dane and his time at Triple Eight. Triple Eight was a team that played the sporting rules very hard and were relentless competitors, but they were never actually cheats. Like that's not something, that was just not something you ever kind of associated Triple Eight with cheating. So part of me thinks. Is this something that Roland Dane as the as the head of premiere would actually be on board with? All this sort of stuff. But I still can't shake the feeling that something's not quite right. I just can't. I can't shake that feeling. And it's it's a funny thing. Someone actually brought up that, and maybe this is what's influencing me a little bit. Like once the Hughes carpit it, my first thought was, that's that seems convenient. And then Someone in the Discord, I was following the Discord along the during the race, someone said, watch the Murray car pit next. And I thought, no, there's absolutely no way. And the next thing that car was in pit lane, and it was just so hard not to go, Wow, okay, this this does feel fishy. So the optics of it aren't great. I guess the next discussion about this is because the reason we're talking about this is because what Walkenshaws did was legal, and if This was something orchestrated by Chevrolet, it's illegal. It should it be. If you're just gonna like let these games play out, I mean it was a pretty entertaining race. For what was actually not an overly entertaining race, it was a very entertaining race because of all these permutations and things going on. So I don't know. Do you just open it all up? Well, just while you were talking about Roland there, I did speak to him too this evening, and he was very forthright on his words were we fucked it up. That he was he was angry with the team for for making an error and not putting enough fuel in the car. So just adding that for what it's worth. But should manufacturers be allowed to manipulate I'm just I'm just I know you're a fan of controversy, but yeah, again, like today we just saw both sides of this final stuff, like it was exciting, but it just it I don't think it's a great look. I would have rather seen Chaz Mostett. This is even a standard team order. Try and win the race. Try and win the car race rather than be playing funny buggers. And evidently so would have Chaz Mosted going by his reaction on But when he's looking in the mirror and there's no one there. When Chaz was on Ryan's bumper earlier in the race, he was pretty keen to get by as well. That's so that's that was an incredible story on its own, considering what happened last year and how much Ryan helped him all through the finals, not just that last day in Adelaide. And Ryan I heard on the TV afterwards after today's race said like, that help from Chaz just shows what a great human. Yeah, he might want to go back and listen to some of the radio. He's gonna get a real shock because it ended with s with with Scaff saying, No, you're doing this. Yeah like it's not we're not having this discussion anymore. Drop back right now. And there did seem to be some back and forth on whether to do it or not. And I'm not sure if we heard all of the communication, but the last one was that Andre is actually pressuring Woody 'cause Andre had got Jared Hughes. Yep. So again, ironically, it was actually a Toyota that was the threat to to Woody and when I asked Ryan Walkenshaw for his take on all of this, I thought he was fairly careful with his words. Yes. I could only imagine that because of what happened in last year's finals, but also because of the fact that they had to apply some team orders today. He Well they played the game beautifully last year, isolating the grand final, the sun Sunday of the grand final. and then that was obviously pretty controversial, but and they played the game well they played the game as well as they could today as well. So Yeah, I I thought the same. I mean, it would have been great for us as journalists if Ryan had absolutely teed off on on the perception that Chevrolet had manipulated the system. But I actually thought his take on it was quite smart and measured. It was. But at the same time he basically read out the regulation that says team orders within a team's fine, but you can't have a third party manipulating, which would be an unusual thing to Bring up if you didn't think there was something in it. Yeah, look, I I think where I sit on it, I do like it. I thought today's race was really made by the drama around cars qualifying for finals. I really enjoyed that element of it. so to me, would I have preferred Chad to try and win the race, or did I enjoy the theatre of him dropping back and the radio back and forth and all that sort of stuff? I'd take the latter. That's where I sit on it. I I really like that. I do think that if you go down the path of, and you know I was asking the question before, not agreeing with. a statement. I think if you do go down the path of full manufacturer manipulation, it becomes too easy. Like you've actually got to put yourself in a position to be able to influence the race with legal team orders. It's not something that's going to happen all of the time. And it creates interesting scenarios like today where a driver has to draw back ten seconds. Like I I find that interesting. And just the the human element and reaction to that from the the athletes that are Have adrenaline pumping the cars, like yeah, I I think that was a really good addition to the to the race today. If Chevrolet had done something, and again, we're not accusing anyone, we're just working on the A information we've got and the sort of vibes that we get having covered this sport for twenty years, each, then I I wouldn't be okay with that. I don't think. I think that would be definitely too far. So because it just becomes too easy. Like that's a it Once teams got their head around how to do things like that, it would just be too easy to manipulate races and it would become a free for all. Well, I think Supercars has already got a bit of a problem here. 'Cause I I do like the storylines and the excitement of the finals and elimination. But yeah, I think there's a bit of a warning light on the dashboard that Supercars needs to find a way to to control this. But again, the only evidence we've got Is that it was a massive coincidence. But regardless of whether it was or not, the the story out of today's race is questioning the integrity of the sport and whether supercars can definitely actually uphold its own rule book on this. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's that's definitely true. It's kind of a shame that it did play out that way because up until that point I felt like the the race was actually a great advertisement for finals. Like I thought it was this is like This race is so much better because of this this underlying storyline that's playing out in front of us. So when it got to that point and people do start asking those questions, it was a bit of a shame to me because it was almost a massive tick of the box in terms of finals. And I think Saturday was as well, like the Chas Most that you he's he's on the cut line, season on the line, title hopes. Potentially fading if they don't get on top of whatever issues they were having at Bathurst and then he comes out and in wet conditions dominates the race and books his semifinal spot. I love all that. I think that's so good. Again, a twenty second dominant win isn't all that much fun without without that part of it. So this weekend was very, very close to a to a a great endorsement of this concept. And it was probably let down a little bit by the way that played out coincidence or foul play. It's interesting to think back to Saturday too, because speaking to Adrian Burgess this evening, he admitted that during the closing stages of today's race he was thinking, I probably should have swapped my cars yesterday when Dave Reynolds was on for second and Anton was fourth. Obviously that was complicated there by the Matt Payne penalty, but that could have actually cost him going through, not not dragging Reynolds off the podium. To help Anton. So yeah, it's it's something we're gonna see more of at Sandown and Adelaide. and I think we know that the GM teams work together at least off the track. Yep. And the Ford teams don't. Yes, correct. Yep. And I think the Toyota team sits somewhere in the middle between that in terms of their working relationship. one of the great shames about what did play out today as well is the fact that Jared Hughes in particular Like what a incredible day for him, his second competitive day, let's say race day as a full time supercars driver and to put it in the shootout. And like we saw Barry Ryan at a at a charity event we were at on Friday night and I had a quick chat to him after Jared had qualified eighteenth or whatever and he I said that's pretty good and he Dave will be in the shootout on Sunday and he was in the shootout on Sunday. And it felt like a really bold call on Friday evening for Barry to say that. But that is he was right. And, you know, we had a chat with Wayne Mackey, his engineer as well on the Saturday. And he talked about the fact that they were looking forward to Saturday's race because he was losing a bit in the back chicane and they just wanted him just to do what is it, eighty-three, eighty-five laps or whatever. Like and then by Sunday he'll be good to go. And he really was. That was an incredibly impressive performance, I think, across the whole weekend for Jared. And To make the shootout, to actually do a really good shootout lap as well, and then race that car so well, like he deserved that that top ten. So whether again it was it was a mistake or whatever, like that was a massive shame. And Cooper Murray did a very good job on debut for premier racing as well, particularly on the Sunday. So with Jared, like this is genuinely the hardest track on the calendar to be thrown into because of the precision required in the Chicane. We said this so many times and he made us look like There's the speed factor, but then there's also the way he raced other guys, and it felt like he laid down this marker today that was almost Brody Kastecki Bathur's 2020 style. Like he was just whatever name was on the windscreen, number on the door, driver in the car, doesn't matter. Yeah, just raced everyone hard. It was just fantastic. Yeah, because it is always the danger that the rookies get their ears boxed in and it takes him a long time to kind of recover from that in a way. We saw that with Kai Allen even a little bit. Even this year has been the year he's finally gone, right, I'm going to start really standing up for myself. But you can go two ways with it as well. I think it was on the opening lap where Jared was sort of side by side with someone, I can't remember exactly who, heading into the beach chicken. And you think it's such an interesting choice because if you're back out, you're backing out and you're a rookie and the next three blokes just come piling past you at the next corner because I go, Yep, he's he's an easy, he's a soft touch here. But then writing the thing off on the first lap of the race doesn't do your your n learning or anything all that much good either. And he filed back in. And that was just good smart driving. And then from there he just worked forward and as you say, just raced so well. So it's very early signs. We're one weekend in. But between how well he drove, the personality that he is, like, I think forget about Erebus, if you were supercars, you'd be like boy, I hope this works out 'cause this guy could be a fantastic long term addition to this championship. Yeah, and he's a great GM story as well. Because he's been backed by them for quite a few years. Yep. and yes, you mentioned Cooper Murray as well. He also laid down a marker, but more so within his own base team. Definitely. 'Cause Jade No Jada has been clearly the best rookie this year and clearly the best driver at premiere, but Cooper sort of put him on notice straight away. Yep, absolutely. anything else you want touch on? Have we mentioned that Brock Veney won the race? I think you maybe just briefly said it. Yeah, definitely. But a bit of an emotional win for him because it was the first one for him at home on the Gold Coast. Yep. So I I reckon considering some of the struggles he's had recently as well, just a shocking bathist. And then yesterday just having no pace in the wet and there being sort of no real answers on that. would have probably added to the to the feeling today as well. It was sort of a weird weekend for Triple Eight where it some points like both of those Red Bull cars had lightning speed or or no speed. Like we just saw it turning off on in Will Brown's car today. It just lost all performance. And I was asking Mark Dutton about that. The cars had only just come out of Parc Fermet and I sort of said, is there any indication that you know broke a roll bar or anything like that? And he said, geez. That'd be nice 'cause the debrief would be a lot shorter if it was that simple. But they do have a lot to look at, both with dry pace and wet pace being quite inconsistent. Yeah. Yep, absolutely. anything else? Last orders. I reckon there'd be a fair debrief on the Kai Allen side of that Grove Garage too, because yeah, his his season was on such a trajectory. It really was. And there's points where you'd go, Yeah, we could see this guy winning the championship and it's just come to a grinding halt really quickly. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see with with some of these scenes. I mean, we saw it with with Walk and Chores last year where y yeah you would always want both cars in the finals, but it can be kinda handy when one isn't. And now Groves are in that position as well, where you're capable of having two cars at the front and one of them can just be a little bit of a fly in the ointment, so to speak. And Matt didn't have a stellar weekend, but he did enough to to leave the round with still leading the championship and therefore gets the biggest seating bonus for for Sandown, so that's quite important. But Sandown is sort of poised to be interesting. Like Anton scraping through in seventh, but I reckon those that Kamara's gonna be very quick at Sandown. That's sort of the I think he's a big grand final champion. And the one that you'd question Performance at Sandown based on what we know about the car is actually Chaz Mostin. So yeah, we'll won't have to wait too long to find out. No, this is why we love final Stefan. So good, all these talking points. I love it. All right, we are going to leave it there. We've still got plenty to chop through from the weekend in terms of website content. So stay tuned to speaka.com over the next few days for all of the reaction out of the weekend and looking ahead to Sandown. And full credit to the noise will be back in this podcast feed on Tuesday morning.