In what can only be described as a monumental crash, chaos unfolded in the final Supercars race of the Albert Park weekend.
Once the lights went out and racing started, there was contact before the first turn when Ryan Wood and Kai Allen got squeezed into each other. Allen got airtime as both cars nursed damage into the first corner.
Due to the damage from the contact earlier Wood locks up and heads off into the gravel trap. At the same time, Allen gets nudged sideways after a divebomb from Macauley Jones, which sends him into Broc Feeney. With cars strewn everywhere, Feeney attempts a powerspin to face the right way and gets hit by Cooper Murray in a huge shunt. The rear of Feeney’s car suffered from significant damage with a huge chunk of the right rear missing.
At the same time, Heimgartner had to head off track to avoid chaos, and lightly hit Declan Fraser while attempting to avoid Feeney.
The safety car was immediately deployed. Matthew Payne finished the first lap in fifth. Heimgartner sat in sixteenth and Wood sat in twenty-first after needing to come into the lane to replace a flat tyre.
The race resumed on lap 5, where Payne floated in the top 4. In another cruel twist, while running in third, Payne suffered from a front right tyre delamination doing into turn 6. He was forced to pull over and dawdle the car back into the lane.
With three laps to go, Heimgartner sat as the lead kiwi in fifteenth. Payne sat in almost unfamiliar territory in twentieth, and Wood was 51 seconds behind Payne in twenty-first.
With one a half laps to go, Will Brown made a late defensive move on Kostecki, which unsettled the car and allowed Kostecki to sweep through. Kostecki went on to win the race, and with that, take the Larry Perkins Trophy.
Teams will now have some work to do to get their cars ready for the New Zealand double header, which kicks off on April 10 at Taupo Motorsport Park.
