BRODIE Kostecki had a near faultless Bathurst 1000 campaign.
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He had the best time in practice four, he was the fastest in the warm-up and he started the race in first after polling the best time in the Top 10 Shootout.
But come race day, he just couldn't match it with Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway, the Kiwi duo finishing almost 20 seconds ahead of Kostecki and his co-driver David Russell in first.
In the post-race media conference, Kostecki said that while he was disappointed not to win, he still described his weekend as "awesome".
"I knew that around lap 70-80, we didn't go to that next level and these guys [van Gisbergen and Stanaway] got an extra 30 seconds of fuel on us," he said.
"These guys were pretty much the class of the field all day, having one of the fastest cars.
"We needed to have a perfect race to beat those guys and they did an awesome job.
"It was still an awesome race by the team and we'll come back next year."
Despite his second place finish, Kostecki still leads the Supercars Championship on 2447 points, 131 points clear of van Gisbergen in second.
He's now come through two consecutive 300 point races in second, picking up 276 in each, so it's not a bad result for the 25-year-old.
But when asked if being well placed in the championship has helped ease the pain of coming second in Bathurst, Kostecki was fairly blunt in his response.
"Not really. I want to win races," he said.
"I'll try and win the next four races. That's pretty much it."
Kostecki will now face two more rounds of Supercars in 2023, with the Gold Coast 500 later this month and the Adelaide 500 later next month.
He is yet to win a Supercars Championship, with his seventh place finish last year his best to date, having made his debut as a wildcard in 2019.
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