{"id":630549,"date":"2026-10-14T17:04:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630549\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T17:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T17:04:20","slug":"cruel-twist-as-supercars-driver-rubbed-out-of-finals-after-disqualification-due-to-rule-breach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/630549\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruel twist as Supercars driver rubbed out of finals after disqualification due to rule breach"},"content":{"rendered":"

The double disqualification that rocked The Bend 500<\/a> has come back to haunt a Supercars team in devastating fashion after it cost one of their drivers a spot in the finals<\/a>. The finals field was officially locked in after the Bathurst 1000<\/a>, with Matt Payne, Broc Feeney, Will Brown, Brodie Kostecki, Kai Allen, Cameron Waters, Anton de Paquale, Chaz Mostert, Ryan Wood and Jack Le Brocq to fight for the championship.<\/p>\n

The field of 10 will be whittled down to seven in the quarter-finals on the Gold Coast from October 23. The final four will be decided at Sandown from November 6, before the champion will then be crowned at the grand final in Adelaide from November 26.<\/p>\n

The 10 finalists were locked in after the Bathurst 1000, with one driver likely feeling particularly dudded not to be one of them. James Golding of Blanchard Racing finished eighth at Bathurst, which should have been enough to see him qualify for the finals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But his disqualification in the previous round at The Bend has cost him. Golding initially finished seventh in South Australia, but was later disqualified for a breach of the rules.<\/p>\n

Blanchard had both of their Ford Mustangs disqualified because Golding and Aaron Cameron didn’t meet the minimum number of 54 laps required behind the wheel. Golding and Cameron only did 50 and 52 laps respectively, with co-drivers Richie Stanaway and Zak Best doing the bulk of the driving.<\/p>\n

Blanchard were caught out by the race finishing ‘time certain’, which reduced it from 147 laps to 141 so it didn’t run over schedule. Golding and Cameron would have done the required laps had the race gone the full 147 laps, but the team mucked up their calculations and they fell short.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

James Golding’s disqualification has cost him a spot in the Supercars finals. (Photo by Daniel Kalisz\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

James Golding misses out on Supercars finals<\/p>\n

A seventh-place finish would have earned Golding 182 points in the championship and put him in 10th place. Instead he got nothing and it put him behind Le Brocq, Andre Heimgartner, Thomas Randle and Jayden Ojeda by 87, 25, 24 and 17 points respectively.<\/p>\n

Le Brocq came fourth at Bathurst to earn 234 points, while Heimgartner was fifth (182 points) and Randle ninth (154). Had Golding kept his 182 points from The Bend, he would have finished 28 points ahead of Le Brocq and made the finals.<\/p>\n

“It was a good weekend for us, but not a great weekend,” Blanchard said after Bathurst. “We had solid results, but didn’t qualify as well as we needed and with no safety cars in quite a boring race, we didn’t get much chance to recover. The team executed well and it was a solid day but we didn’t have quite enough pace.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The double disqualification that rocked The Bend 500 has come back to haunt a Supercars team in devastating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-630549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630549","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=630549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}