{"id":245936,"date":"2025-10-28T08:38:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T08:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245936\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T08:38:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T08:38:16","slug":"andre-heimgartner-on-bathurst-supercars-finals-miss-gold-coast-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/245936\/","title":{"rendered":"Andr\u00e9 Heimgartner on Bathurst Supercars finals miss, Gold Coast podium"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOTORSPORT is a game full of \u2018what ifs\u2019 and that certainly rings true for Andr\u00e9 Heimgartner<\/a>\u2019s month of October.<\/p>\n

Heimgartner was provisionally into Supercars\u2019 finals until the very last lap of the regular season, when Broc Feeney<\/a> passed him for sixth place with two corners to go in the Bathurst 1000.<\/p>\n

That saw Kai Allen<\/a> go through instead, with Heimgartner dropping to three points on the wrong side of the bubble.<\/p>\n

That arguably makes the Kiwi\u2019s successful Gold Coast weekend all the more bittersweet.<\/p>\n

There, Heimgartner accumulated the fifth-most round points thanks to finishes of seventh and third in the pair of 250km races \u2013 which theoretically would have been enough to put him through to the Sandown semis.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not to be.<\/p>\n

\"\"The #8 R&J Batteries Camaro gets airborne. Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n

Heimgartner had not spoken much of his finals heartache until Sunday post-race on the Gold Coast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was courtesy of Broc, but he was just doing his race,\u201d the Brad Jones Racing spearhead said when asked if he\u2019d replayed that last lap of Bathurst much in his head or if he would do anything differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, I can sit there and blame the person that passed you with two corners to go, but I basically just f***ed up and aquaplaned and then he went down the racing line.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went off a few laps earlier and made contact and bent my steering and lost a spot, that also could have done it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, f***, you could call through so many times throughout the year on things that could have gone better. It is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Third on Sunday was nevertheless a welcome result for the 30-year-old, who had been staring down the barrel of his first podium-less season since 2018.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been quite a frustrating year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think my average qualifying is 18th or something, so pretty horrendous and I just haven\u2019t been able to find the groove. But we\u2019ve kept working away at it and not given up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like many of his peers, Heimgartner had some thoughts to share on the wild airtime associated with navigating the Surfers Paradise chicanes this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t lapse your concentration and every time you go into the back chicane you\u2019re like \u2018okay, here we go\u2019 and you have got to really just smash it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou almost have a crash every few laps. So it\u2019s pretty awesome.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot sure if it\u2019s completely safe but it\u2019s a good spectacle.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MOTORSPORT is a game full of \u2018what ifs\u2019 and that certainly rings true for Andr\u00e9 Heimgartner\u2019s month of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-245936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}