Championship leader Brodie Kostecki has fended off a fierce challenge from young gun Kai Allen for his fifth win of the Supercars season in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
Allen, who broke through for his maiden Supercars win<\/a> on Friday in the first race of the Christchurch round<\/a>, was on Kostecki’s tail for the majority of Saturday’s 37-lap sprint.<\/p>\n But the 2023 champion used his experience to hang tough amid a strong push from his fellow Ford rival.<\/p>\n There was barely a second between the pair for the entire race, with both drivers pitting at the same time.<\/p>\n It was a role reversal from Friday when Kostecki trailed Allen and was unable to find a way ahead.<\/p>\n The Ford driver fended off a fierce challenge from young gun Kai Allen. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n “Got a ripper start again,” Kostecki said.<\/p>\n “We’ve been dialled in on that this weekend.<\/p>\n “We changed a lot on the car and we’ve got the same sort of pace, it feels like, to the guys next to us, but stoked to get the win. <\/p>\n “We had a little pit stop fumble, but was able to just use the clean air to my advantage.<\/p>\n “Towards the end, Kai did everything he could, he was up in my bumper. <\/p>\n “Once his front tyres got hot, it was game over.”<\/p>\n Emerging New Zealander Wood, who won in Taup\u014d last weekend, drove superbly to finish third.<\/p>\n Pole-sitter Matt Payne gave up his advantage at the start after being overtaken by Kostecki and Allen.<\/p>\n Payne was the last driver to pit as he attempted to reclaim the lead.<\/p>\n But the Kiwi favourite’s gamble backfired, rushing the pit stop, before losing a tyre shortly after returning to the track.<\/p>\n In a crucial blow, Payne slumped to finish 19th.<\/p>\n Wood will start on pole for Saturday’s second sprint, before the 67-lap race on Sunday concludes the historic first round in Christchurch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Championship leader Brodie Kostecki has fended off a fierce challenge from young gun Kai Allen for his fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[158,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-386339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}