Brodie Kostecki has all but won his maiden Supercars title after Shane van Gisbergen was eliminated from the opening race of the Adelaide 500 in a first-lap crash.
Kostecki's teammate Will Brown – who will replace van Gisbergen at the Red Bull team next year when the three-time champ departs for NASCAR – was pushed into the wall on the exit of just the fourth corner of the race by the Ford Mustang of Anton de Pasquale.
Brown was then hit from behind by an unsighted van Gisbergen, which ripped the right-rear wheel off the Brown car, and the left front off the van Gisbergen car.
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Both were out of the race on the spot.
Van Gisbergen entered the race with a 131-point deficit to Kostecki and needed to outscore the Erebus ace by 20 points to keep the championship alive heading into the final race of the year.
"I haven't even worked up a sweat yet," Brown said on the broadcast.
"Everyone blocks on the inside … so I went for the outside.
"I knew I had a good overlap, I would have tucked him behind him if I wasn't at least completely next to him. I thought (De Pasquale) would be able to see me and knew I was completely there, but obviously not.
"I'm not going to judge it too much, he probably just thought he'd run me a little bit wide, and then I ended up in the fence and unfortunately took out one of the championship leaders as well.
"So, tough day … it's a bit disappointing."
Triple Eight team boss Jamie Whincup lamented the relatively low starting positions of his two drivers.
"It was unfortunate, but when you qualify sixth and 11th you're exposed to stuff like this happening, and that's what happened," he said.
"We'll see what we'll see but it's pretty much all done for us unfortunately."
Kostecki started the race from pole, and now effectively only needs to finish the race to secure the title.
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