The Repco Supercars Series visited Surfers Paradise, Queensland on Saturday afternoon for Race 25 of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters started the race on the pole with Penrite Racing’s Matthew Payne starting second. On the opening lap, Waters held off Payne to keep first place. Thomas Randle Chaz Mostert, and Shan van Gisbergen were behind those guys.
Two laps later, Brodie Kostecki started to make his move up to seventh place after starting tenth. Up front, Waters began to pull away from Payne. On lap 8, Broc Feeney kicked off the pit cycle.
Later in the race, drivers began to rack up bad sportsmanship flags over exceeding track limits. On lap 26, Waters went to pit road. When Waters left pit road, he extended his lead to 2.8 seconds over David Reynolds.
The first five-second penalty for exceeding track limits went to Todd Hazelwood on lap 34. Not long after, Cameron Hill and Decan Fazer were also with the same penalty before their second pit stops. On lap 50, David Reynolds was hit with a bad sportsmanship flag.
On lap 68, Waters led David Reynolds by 1.8 seconds with Shane van Gisbergen closing in. Thanks to traffic, Reynolds closed in on Waters on lap 71. However, the traffic did not help Reynolds as Gisbergen quickly caught and passed Reynolds for second place on lap 75.
From there, the battle for the win was between Cameron Waters and Shane van Gisbergen. On lap 80, Waters was hit for a bad sportsmanship flag. Two laps later, Gisbergen’s margin behind Waters was down to four seconds.
Van Gisbergen attacked Waters at Turn 4 but Waters distanced himself through the beach chicane. Van Gisbergen threatened again but it was too late as Waters won the race by .1945 seconds over Van Gisbergen. It was Waters’s second win of the season since Race 1 at Newcastle.
Shane van Gisbergen cut Brodie Kostecki’s championship lead to 104 points with three races remaining in the season. The rest of the top five finishers were David Reynolds, Thomas Randle, and Brodie Kostecki.
Coverage of Race 26 of the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 is tonight at 6:30 pm on YouTube.
