Latest / Full Credit to the Noise / Townsville 500 daily: Saturday
Transcript
- Speedcafe Team: Hello and welcome to the Saturday edition of our daily podcast from the 2026 Townsville 500. My name is Andrew Van Lewen. I'm joined by Speed Cafe's managing editor, Stefan Bartholomew. Stefan, sometimes we start with the first big news story of the day. Sometimes we start with a race winner with these pods, but I think we have to just skip straight to the very end of the day. Because it's quite late by the time we've got home. Because we were watching some bull riding. And not just bull riding, but Barry Ryan as a ⁓ protection athlete, aka Rodeo Clown, putting his life on the line. What an end to a ⁓ a Saturday in Townsville. You were pretty keen to ⁓ go and have a nice dinner after a big day at the track. Yep. But ⁓ this was something we just had to see with our own eyes. Yeah. If that clip had come up online without us knowing about it, you would have just said this is some wild AI. Yeah. And moved on. But it really happened. Yep. And the clips on socials do not do it justice. That is genuine insanity to ⁓ jump in there. He had about a ten minute ⁓ crash course in what to do or what not to do. Yeah. They gave him a little vest and ⁓ put him in. Well, they told him not to run because you can't outrun the bull. And then there was one moment in I think that he was in there for three rights, and on the last one where he sort of fell out of the triangle of safety with the other protection athletes, and he just ran. He legged it. And you cannot blame him one bit. Not at all. He also had a few supercar drivers heckling him a bit from the sidelines. ⁓ yeah. I heard a bit of ⁓ Ryan Woodlip coming across, which is is fun. I saw David Reynolds was there too. Yeah. So ⁓ obviously ⁓ he's sponsored by Snowy River, who's sponsored this pro bull riding league. ⁓ so we had a bit of a laugh with Charlie Schwerkholt that Barry's plan here is actually to steal his sponsor on the way through. Well, Charlie was doing everything he could to fit in. He was dressed as a full cowboy. That was ⁓ that was something as well. Amazing. I don't know what else we can say about that. Nah, I don't think I think we should move on. Let's move on to ⁓ the race. the Matt Payne train continues. A fairly dominant win for Matt today. Helped a little bit by probably the margin at least was helped a little bit by Brody Kastecki's slow pit stop. But yeah, we talk about it so much, but like There's just not many things that that team can't do at the moment. And when you put Matt in a car that fast and give him clean air at the front of the field, man, he's just he's just unstoppable. And Grove's ability to execute races. I know they have had some small pit stop hiccups this year, but ⁓ yeah, he was another impressive job from that team. It was a shame we didn't get to see ⁓ the fight with Brody. Yeah. ⁓ in a way it was kind of a shame that Matt was in the race. It sounds unkind, but that would have been one of the all time races. Yeah, absolutely. Had he not been ⁓ fifteen seconds up the road because the next eight cars was covered by ten seconds of the checker field. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ Anton beat ⁓ Anton D Pasqually, second place, an impressive effort because he came from fairly deep in the field. Do you remember exactly where he qualified? Eleventh. Eleventh, yeah. So came from fairly deep in the field, but Even more impressive than that is the turnaround. And we talked about that last night on the Daily Pod about, you know, the the fact that there is always the potential to turn the weekend around. and, you know, teammate Ann had a had a tough one on Friday, but boy, that was a that was a big turnaround from Anton to end up with second place today. Yeah, I spoke to Adrian Burgess afterwards and he said that ⁓ yesterday they were really hurt by that red flag at the end of the ONI practice session, which meant they didn't get a green tire run on either car. And so they didn't realise what they went into qualifying with was no good. Yeah. ⁓ they obviously improved that a bit today over one lap, but not enough because he didn't make the shootout. But yeah, they ran super long on the strategy. They probably benefited from a lot of the jostling that was going on with with the group of cars that they managed to leapfrog. Obviously, ⁓ getting track position when you've got a tire offset. Yeah. That's ⁓ that's how you do it. And ⁓ they played that ⁓ game of minimizing the pit stop time by under filling it and ⁓ forcing Antoine to save pretty hard at the end. Yep. Yep. It was a ⁓ it was an impressive performance. ⁓ Brody Kastecki third, I did touch on the slow stop before, which kind of took him out of the running. He did say in the press conference at the end of the day that he felt like that did rob him of at least a chance at victory. It was a bit of a well they had a they had a ring in, as he put it, in the pit crew ⁓ today because ⁓ Charlie Blanchard, one of their crew members, was injured yesterday during a pit stop. He ⁓ sustained a finger injury, went to hospital, had surgery on that today, and is apparently recovering well. But ⁓ yeah, so I guess it it wasn't the the there was no fault from a any sort of stand in pit crew in terms of the slow stop, but I guess things like that just kind of throw the whole thing out of kilt a a little bit. ⁓ but yeah, as you pointed out before, it was a shame we didn't kind of get to see what Brody could have done because that is a very fast car as well, the seventeen this weekend. Yeah, we still got to the podium despite all the time that was lost there and ⁓ they didn't have the fuel churn ⁓ plugged in the whole time either, which they could have had a bit of fuel time saved ⁓ if they'd been a bit quicker on that. Probably the other note from DJR of the day was that Roland Gray made the shootout, which was a pretty notable performance considering where he's been lately. Obviously the race pace wasn't there, but that at least gives him something to hold his hat on. Yep, absolutely. ⁓ let's talk Tickford. Some interesting stuff happening there. Like Tommy Randall had a fantastic day, really. ⁓ outqualified Cam Waters was ahead of Cam Waters on the road. They let Cam go through. They did the old shake and bake that ⁓ that Triple Eight tried in Darwin. And like Triple Eight, couldn't reverse it, but not because of a safety car, but just because of the fact that by the point they were looking to do it. Well w to probably explain that like they let Waters through because they thought he was quicker and could go after Brody. When he couldn't get to Brody, they felt they couldn't reverse the positions because Will Brown was too close to Tommy Randall and it could have got messy there. you got a feel for Thomas, don't you? He just seems to be yesterday they like took his like changed his ⁓ his strategy plan to ensure that Cam could win the race and today he kinda hands the position over and then doesn't get it back. These ⁓ team orders calls can get pretty awkward on you pretty quickly, can't they? Yeah. And if you if you do look at it just as an isolated, it's sort of fair enough you can see why it played out like that. But it does feel like the ball always bounces away from Tommy in these 50-50s. Yeah. You can't get away from the fact that it feels like Cam's team. And just the little extra bit of insult or injury for me is the fact that Cam is up there in third in points. He is absolutely fine in terms of the finals. There would have to be a massive disaster for him not to make the ten at the end of the injury rop. But Tommy is fighting for every point he can get right now. Yep. And so, yeah, it was only seven points or whatever it was, but yeah. Gee, it hurts. Yeah, I bet it does. I just s you kind of just wonder when's it gonna happen for Tommy. And it f there were times today, like even the shootout where it like, you know, he was hanging on there for so long, like, is this Is this the day? Is this Tommy Randall's day? And then it's just not again, which is yeah, disappointing for him, obviously. But ⁓ I certainly hope that at some point it all does come together on one day and he gets that win and that opens the floodgates and we get to sort of see him really exploit his full potential. Yeah, I think we shouldn't let the the ending there ⁓ overshadow what was a good day for him, considering where they've been. ⁓ obviously the Tickford cars have improved in the last little bit. Absolutely. He had a difficult daw and but he's he's moved forward here in Townsville as well. And that shootout that was great to be third on the grid. Yeah. ⁓ that was a really good performance. So I think he should take a fair bit of heart from today. Yeah. ⁓ triple eight. Sixth for Will Brown, eighth for Brock Feeney. Again, like not by many team standards, not a disaster. But like this is triple eight in Townsville. And we're having the same conversation. That we had yesterday, which is about the fact that they qualified poorly and they made some progress in the race, but like this is Triple Eight and Townsville. Well, the damning thing for me today was the fact that both Blanchard racing team cars, the customer team, qualified in the shootout and neither triple eight car did. So the the old data pipe that BRT pays to get flowing to them was probably going the other way. But the invoices still go in the same direction. So Yeah, I mean, obviously they had more pace in the race and they were really in that in that ruck there in the top ten of ⁓ so much jostling, which was really entertaining for us, but I'm sure frustrating for particularly Brock Feeney that we haven't really seen ⁓ in this sort of ⁓ fight too often. Yeah, that is that is the weird thing. Like you you kind of we've got used to seeing Will Brown having to fight his way back from not qualifying all that well, but to see Brock Feeney just yeah. Well outside the ten two days in a row. Just feel feels really weird. It was quite interesting in in qualifying because ⁓ Wilbrand didn't go for a n ⁓ a last run in in Q two and he was talking on the radio to to his engineer Andrew Edwards saying, Well, look, like we've got a pretty quick race car. Does it really matter if we end up eleventh or twelfth or whatever on the grid? and he expand on that in the in the post session interview saying, Well, if we put another set of greens on, we were we were gonna rob ourselves with ties for the shootout and we were probably gonna end up eighth, ninth, or tenth anyway, so it was worth rolling the dice on it for the sake of a couple of spots. But like, that's not the like that's a defeatist attitude. He nearly had me convinced at the end of all that. And then you go, hang on a minute they probably would have preferred to be in the shootout than spectating. And you could tell by the reaction of But we actually did get bumped out right at the end. But I mean if the if that's the if they're sitting there going, well, at best case scenario where you know we're gonna be in the back half of the ten, that's just that's just not triple eight. That's just not the triple eight we know. Well, it has been a little bit of a thing for that side of the garage. Yeah, true. But not the Brock Fanny side. I mean to see him in P eighteen in quality and then in the opening couple of laps he's complaining that Reuben Goodall passed him off track at turn one. with respect to a Tickford wildcard driver. Like that is not I I spoke to Ruben about that afterwards. Yeah. Yeah, that wasn't something he expected to be in the in amongst ⁓ before the weekend. Yeah. the best Toyota was Chaz Mostit in seventh place. Ryan Wood, he was dead last and dropped a lot of points after making contact with was it Kai Allen who was coming up the inside of it? It was, yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so that was that was a weird one. Like 'cause the pass was kind of done. ⁓ and there was like Kai was a bit on the edge and was losing a bit of rear grip, but like But when you crowd someone Yeah very close to being in the wall down there, they're so dirty at that part of the track. Yeah. Like You gotta expect that. I love the emotional roller coaster that comes with Ryan Wood. Yeah. But blowing up about that, I think once he saw the replay, he might have had a different different view on it. Yeah, and obviously just that, you know, the way he sort of turned across the car, made the contact and and did whatever damage he did, it just seemed so incredibly unnecessary. If they're side by side into the corner, you sort of go, right, you're trying to defend your territory and defend your position and that makes sense. But when the pass is executed like that that really felt like a really just costly and unnecessary thing to do. And it's yeah, it's it's it's really cost him a lot of points. Yeah, so a tough day for the Toyota contingent. Chaz salvaged seventh, but ⁓ the B J R guys, they just had no speed. Andre Heim got another the best of those in in sixteenth. Obviously Cam Hill got taken out early with damage, but ⁓ those three guys all out in Q one for B J R that's a that's a tough one. ⁓ anything else you want to talk about out of today? ⁓ well Kai Allen going like Backwards, not literally, but ⁓ down the field in a race felt quite rare. ⁓ so I did go down and ask the Groves about that afterwards, whether he'd copped any damage in that ⁓ sort of frac Ari was with Woody or anything. And they just said that they went slightly early on that second stop. So he had a little tire disadvantage and they just didn't have the the car speed to ⁓ sort of make that work. He was running a fairly different setup to Matt Payne. Yep. So ⁓ it must have been because Matt Payne was Fifteen seconds down the road. Sometimes it is the way you drive it, but they were ⁓ quite ⁓ happy that they knew that they could copy the ⁓ solutions from one car and fix the problems on the other. Yeah. All right. I think we will leave it there and try and get this on the internet because it is getting quite late now. Make sure you do stay tuned to speedcafe.com across Sunday, the Townsville five hundred. We'll have everything that's happening there covered, and we'll be back in this podcast feed tomorrow night with this Sunday edition of our daily podcast.