Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Gold Coast 500 daily: Saturday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of our daily podcast from the 2026 Gold Coast 500. My name is Andrew Van Loren, and I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, I set it on the walk into the track this morning. A dry shootout and a wet race. That is the recipe for entertainment, and that was some pretty entertaining supercars racing today. It was. The rain shore arrived in time to to inshore a entertaining race. Mm-hmm. But what we got was a Chaz Mostett masterclass. I guess those ingredients of wet weather, this Gold Coast track and the finals. He's just built for it. He really is. And we talked a bit in the lead up to the weekend about Chaz's title hopes being one of the huge storylines coming into the Gold Coast because he is the reigning champion. He was on the bubble. Well he was below the bubble, right? Coming into the weekend. He was. Coming off the back of a pretty average Bathus 1000, it really felt like he and Walk and Shore TWG Racing had a bit to do this weekend, and they got it done in one race. And to be honest, a couple of laps, like whatever they start, whatever the starting tire pressures in that car were, whatever they did to that thing in terms of a wet setup, it was an absolute jet, and he made it look easy, and he's on his way to Sandown. Well, we know one thing they did before the race on that car was replace the front bar because that was a wild shootout lap. That was classic Chaz as well, wasn't it? And in the end he got beaten to pole by by Brock Feeney, who put together a also a really highly committed but a little bit of a smoother lap than what Chaz did. But yeah, he just just drove away from obviously you had to pass Brock in those those early laps or that first green lap after the safety car start. And they did not see which way he went. I think the best battle he had was with David Reynolds, and Reynolds was almost a lap down. Yeah, it's a funny thing with wet weather racing like that. Like it's obviously always challenging. Like you're trying to deal with very limited grip and a lot of risk to try and get it done. But when you can get the car right, and we've seen that probably Andre Heimgartner's the best example in a couple of the wet races he's won with a Car just clearly is doing everything he needs it to do in those tough conditions. And you can really just pull away from the field and make it look really easy. And obviously, yeah, whatever, whatever happened with that car, like Chaz was push pressing on pretty hard in those first few laps. You could see he was having quite a few moments. You you're always going to have that in those conditions, but he clearly had confidence in the grip that was under him to be able to gap the field like that. Yeah, the car was good, but I think there's a fair bit of jazz in the in the outcome too. He's just yeah, the way he feels the grip, the way he drives it in the rain, we've seen it before. He he's very, very good. And those early laps it was properly wet. I was I was impressed that they actually let the field go. Very much so. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a massive tick for Motorsport Australia 'cause it would have been really easy, particularly on the the first green lap when you saw the puddle off the back of the curb. In turn two, is it? Because it's one and two, right? Yeah, turn three is the left right as part of that complex. Like there was just so much water coming up, and they let the race go. And that's really what we want to see. And credits at everyone driving around there as well, because that could have been a safety car fest and it was the complete opposite. Like that was some pretty impressive professional race car driving. Well the officials really put the whistle away on on pretty much everything today. We saw a couple of incidents that were unpenalised, which we might talk about a little bit more, but the lack of blue flags, particularly for David Reynolds, couldn't believe that. And then yeah, again, kind of like Bathurst, we saw a couple of incidents that you think, or this could be a safety car, but they they let the situation resolve itself, which was both of those Blanchard racing team Mustangs coming to grief in separate incidents at the same spot on the track. Zach Bates had a pretty hairy moment with with one of them, but they yeah, they elected not to call the safety car. Yeah, that was wild. When you talk about other incidents, you're talking about, for example, Matt Payne on Brock Feeney, Brody Kastecki into Cam Waters at one point as well. Like there did seem to be a bit of leniency in terms of running out of grip on the inside and running into a car and pushing them white. Yeah, they were the two that I thought were the standout incidents. and I was a little bit surprised that Matt didn't maybe get five seconds for his bump on Brock. But again, I would think in the wet conditions they they were just a bit more lenient. Yeah. I think with the Brody Cam one, there was a little bit more of Cam turning down. Yeah. like Brody was obviously in there sort of only a little bit and pretty late, but it was a little bit less marginal, I thought, than the the Payne one. Yep, you mentioned David Reynolds just then. the blue flags thing is definitely It felt like it should be a really big talking point after the race, but even Chas Most was talking it down massively in the press conference. Everything's better when you win, right? Yeah, I guess so. He was he was blowing up, but not about Reynolds, but earlier about lap cars in the way. Yeah. But it was a great day for David Reynolds. And it's funny I spoke to him I think it was yesterday at the track. It was yesterday 'cause it was after the wet practice and after the dry practice as well. And I sort of said, How's the car feeling? He said In the wet, it's pretty good. In the dry, we might not be quite where we need to be. So he was really hoping for rain. They made the decision to pit him really early, get him out of that train, which got much worse as Brock Feeney started a struggle and really closed up a lot of the field. And he had a bit of clear vision, clearly a pretty quick car. And he ends up on the podium at a time where, you know, two days ago we were talking to him about whether this might be his last Gold Coast. And there he is standing on the podium. Like he just has a habit. Of probably almost annoyingly for the team he drives for, just turning it on at this time of the year when there are still these question marks about his future. Yeah, awesome result for him, and as you say, like a good call from Jeff Slater and those guys on that car with the strategy to to pit him and he had the speed to make the most of it. Obviously it looked like he was gonna get third and then Matt Payne having the track limits penalty five seconds. it was really line ball whether like Dave was like four point eight adrift when that came and he obviously just put the hammer down and made sure that he was within the five and got the place. But it kind of saved team eighteen from an awkward scenario. Totally. Anton Di Basquale was in fourth, he's obviously a finals driver. Yeah. And I did think for a little bit, if they pull a podium away from Dave Reynolds to give Anton a few more points, this'll feel pretty cruel. But In the end, yeah, that sort of changed any any question over that. But that would have been like something that was discussed, right? Surely, because I guess the really awkward part was it it was about an eight point five second gap back to Anton at the time where it sort of became clear that that would be an option to do that. So it would have been very obviously team orders, completely allowed, nothing illegal about it. But as you say, like a big ask of a driver who's fighting for his career to say, Hey, do you mind just dropping back eight seconds so that We can get some more points for your teammate because he's in finals contention, but he really needed to get that job done and relegate Matt Payne to third to sort of equalize any points lost, didn't he? Somewhat ironic that it was Matt Payne also involved, considering the noise around him and team eighteen going forward. But yes, we saw a couple of teammate switches through the race early on. Tommy Randall let Cam Waters through. Yep. And then later we had the two triple eight cars switch around, that was Brock letting Will through. Yeah. so some some happy team play there, nothing too controversial. Yeah, Brock Feeney just couldn't quite get it moving in the wet today, right? Like just very early on. Obviously lost the position to Chaz at the very start of the Green Flag running in the race and then just again, like I said before, in the wet, when you get everything right and your pressures are right and you got the right tire tamp it all feels really easy. But it just particularly that Brock Feeney car, they just Definitely didn't get it right today. Yeah, and the assumption initially is always tire pressure. Yeah. And they'll hopefully be able to fix it in the first stop with different pressures, but then they were doing a setup change on the front end in the second stop, which suggested there was there was more going on. Yeah. But I did see a stat that Brock Feeney's gone backwards from where he's qualified in every single wet weather gen three race. So yeah, I'm not sure if it's all set up. Yeah. let's talk about who's got work to do tomorrow in terms of the finals. I mean the big one is Kai Allen, had an alternate alternator issue today. that led to a whole bunch of other issues, including his cool suit and all this sort of stuff, but ended up you know, right at the back and kind of it feels like he's got a lot to do tomorrow. Yeah, he's now eighth, so he's below that car line and he's fifty three points below, which is a fair bit. Yeah. So Tough for him and then Ryan Wood is sixty points below. So I mean he just really struggled for pace if you want to talk about a car that wasn't working, which is bizarre when on the other side of the garage the thing was an absolute jet. Yeah, and we know that Woody's great in the wet when everything's right. So yeah, tough for those two guys and then Jack LeBrock as well. He got turned around early by by Cam Hill. Yeah. But yeah, he's got a big margin to the cut line as And that's that was always a symptom of being That far back in the pack, right? Like he put himself in the jeopardy by qualifying where he was. And it's just really hard to see the turnaround at this point. I mean, we don't know exactly what the weather's gonna do tomorrow. We can look at all the forecasts we like, but I feel like we've been chasing the forecast all weekend and it hasn't necessarily lined up with what the what the websites show and what actually happens in the sky. But yeah, it's hard to see Jack really coming back from here. Yeah, well both days have not been wet days or dry days. They've been a bit of both and the weather sort of rolls in quite quickly and then the track can dry relatively quickly too. And obviously we saw for a fair bit of the race the track was actually drying out. We sort of had like a half dry track. Yeah. which can be pretty tough on on the wets, but there was not much chance anyone was going to slicks. The closest we saw was actually them rolling out slicks when Kai Allen had to do that that third stop, but they quite quickly put him back in the garage. Yeah, I guess when you're that far back and you're not willing to take that risk, then it probably wasn't worth taking. Who else caught your eye today? I Jaden O'Jada, we talked yesterday about the fact that he'd struggled in qualifying so much. we didn't quite have the answer as to why that was at the time, but it turns out it was effectively just curb strikes during qualifying. Like he just couldn't quite get a lap together. There was enough to suggest from other sectors that he was capable of being higher, not necessarily in the shootout, but higher than he was, but couldn't get it together. But he did put in a great drive to make a lot of ground and end up, I think where was he in the end? Tenth place, yeah. So I mean, yeah, I felt like it was a day of watching him move forward, which is pretty impressive. Yeah, he ended up one spot ahead of Cooper Murray, who got assaulted there on the last slap by James Golding. Mm right in front of Chaz Mostit. So we talked about really how smooth sailing a fair bit of Chaz's race was, but with two to go, he gets the call to save me a bit of fuel. Yeah. Which it would have been pretty unnerving considering the storyline that happened at Bathurst with team eighteen. And then yeah, on the last lap these these blokes run into each other in front of him at turn four. Yeah, that is pretty wild. Now, how did James Golding end up thirteenth when I saw him hanging out the wall at some point? Yeah, that's probably a question for him that that we haven't asked rather than me. But that car is and James quick in the wet, topped practice one yesterday. Yeah. didn't qualify in the ten in the dry, but I think they would have been pretty confident they had something decent in the in the wet. But again, Blanchard racing team just not executing the races. whether it's driver or whether it's team and and on the other side obviously Camo had a spin as well. But then they had the drive through penalty for the refueling breach where they topped up the the tower, which you're allowed to do in the Juro races, but not in on the Gold Coast. So and we saw Dick Johnson Racing make that mistake last year. And that was a team penalty last year. So it was a hundred points. This year it was a driver penalty 'cause it was a P L P but I guess if you sort of Think about it, where Camo was running by that point, it was probably less hurtful to go for the PLP, right? Yeah, I'm not a hundred percent sure why that is different, but could it be the post race investigation and a report, but they obviously hadn't completed their That's gotta be what it was, surely, the difference. Yes, but it is a good point that it's it's a different penalty right the DJR one was teams championship and and a fine yep so it didn't impact the drivers. So as we head into Sunday Matt Payne does lead the way on 3,277 points. Brock Feeney is in second 55 behind. Will Brown third 75 behind Chaz Mossett is 88 behind in fourth but he is locked into Sandown so that means there's six spots up for grabs depending on who wins the race tomorrow. Brody Gastecki is 90 behind. Anton Di Basquale is 112 behind. Cam Waters 136 behind. He is in seventh and on the elimination line at the moment. And then we've got Kai Allen, 189, as you said. Ryan Wood, 196, and Jack LeBrock, 230. That's where things stand. I guess with the way the weather's been, it's just really difficult to make any kind of assumptions about what's going to play out tomorrow, right? For sure. And just on the points there. The key part is so Matt Payne can only drop as far as seventh points wide. So because there's a win in your end, if any of Kai, Ryan, or Jack win and Matt has drop to seventh in points, quite an unlikely scenario, but that's why he's not yet locked in. Technically locked in. Yep. Anything else we need to talk about out of the day? I guess just the two little pieces of history created by Chaz's win there. yes. We've got this unusual scenario where this weekend he's gone to the spare chassis because of the big crash he had at Bathurst. And this spare chassis actually the one that he debuted at the start of last year as a Mustang and then mid season switched to to a different car and they rebodied this one as a super. So it's the first car to win a championship race as two different types of car. Yep. which is just a by product of of modern supercars and and what they actually are. But actually the the subplot of that is the fact that Chaz requested to move out of that car last year because he was sort of all over the place and not really feeling a consistent response from the car and and questioned the chassis. And yeah, I I don't think it was it certainly wasn't in the plan to go back to it before he had that big crash, but he did make some comment after the race about Yeah, I thought there was a hoodoo on this car and clearly there isn't. It was just just me. It's funny because I remember us getting a very different explanation about why he was chasing Chassis before Townsville last year. Yeah, it was all about logistics and Toyota planning. That was the line from the team. Yeah. But credit to the Walkenshaws as well. Their two hundredth championship race win chalked up today. Yep. That that is all very impressive. All right, I think we're gonna leave it there at this time of night. Stay tuned to speakfa.com tomorrow where we lock down the drivers that are going to Sandown, still in contention for the championship. There'll be plenty of other news floating about as well. And we'll be back in this podcast feed tomorrow night with the Sunday edition of the daily podcast.