allowed Brodie Kostecki to snatch victory with Dick Johnson Racing co-driver Todd Hazelwood.<\/a><\/p>\nTeam 18 has been on the receiving end of intense criticism since the brutal blunder, which team owner Charlie Schwerkolt said was down to \u201can issue within the team\u2019s fuel strategy software.\u201d<\/p>\n
That explanation did not sit well with Skaife, who said more thought should have been given to the final pit stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s horrible, but it\u2019s unforgivable. It\u2019s Australia\u2019s biggest car race,\u201d Skaife said on Fox Sports\u2019 MotorRacing 360.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt your last stop, you have to put the right amount of fuel in. That\u2019s just fundamental, and you have to make it so that you can sprint to the end. So play it out.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the Safety Car doesn\u2019t come out, they stop earlier, because you\u2019re going at full race pace. So the Safety Car almost rescued them.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the reality is, it is Australia\u2019s biggest car race \u2013 and everyone with every bit of brainpower in that organisation needed to be part of the last stop to work out, not just with software and stuff, but the actual calculation.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to go back to fundamentals for the last stop,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, a software number that updates after every lap that they\u2019ll have a number to get home by.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat needs to have, firstly, that flexibility \u2013 obviously didn\u2019t have that \u2013 the second part is that you go and work it out just with a plan out calculation of what you need to finish the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s the math, there\u2019s the simple calculation over here of what you think you need to get to the end, and then there\u2019s predictive software that gives you a guide.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, in the middle of all that, neither of those took place.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking for Australia\u2019s biggest race. I mostly feel sorry for Anton De Pasquale and Lee Holdsworth who drove so well all day and probably should have won that race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is, there\u2019s a massive mistake at the end, and you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Concerns that Team 18 mightn\u2019t have enough fuel to make it to the end emerged when De Pasquale left pit lane from his pit stop with a 10-second margin over second-placed Zach Bates.<\/p>\n
In the closing stanza, Team 18 team principal Adrian Burgess expressed confidence that the team would be able to make it to the finish.<\/p>\n
However, their predicament soon reared its head as the call came from Andrew Donnelly to driver De Pasquale to begin saving fuel with 10 laps remaining.<\/p>\n
Exactly where the error crept in has not been revealed by the team. Various theories have been floated, including a short fill in the penultimate pit stop being treated as a full fill.<\/p>\n
\u201cProbably that\u2019s really when it came up about the margin because they didn\u2019t have that big a gap in terms of fuel over Zach Bates,\u201d Skaife reasoned.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo probably what they should have had immediately was five seconds, because an extra five seconds of fuel would have got them home.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been evident after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team 18 will have little time to dwell on its demoralising defeat with the Gold Coast 500 taking place on October 23-25.<\/p>\n
Listen to Mark Skaife\u2019s call of the Bathurst 1000 finish<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Anton De Pasquale\/Lee Holdsworth Chevrolet Camaro during the Bathurst 1000. Photo: Rhys Vandersyde\/InSyde Media De Pasquale and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":928598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[42655,64,63,12356,102747,127332,7499,85,42657],"class_list":["post-928597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-anton-de-pasquale","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bathurst-1000","tag-lee-holdsworth","tag-mark-skaife","tag-slot4","tag-sports","tag-team-18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928597","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=928597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/928597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/928598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=928597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=928597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=928597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Skaife](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792035743_373_public.jpeg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Anton De Pasquale\/Lee Holdsworth Chevrolet Camaro during the Bathurst 1000. Photo: Rhys Vandersyde\/InSyde Media<\/p>\n