While Dick Johnson Racing’s Brodie Kostecki left the field in his wake, the Triple Eight and Walkinshaw drivers fought hard over the remaining podium spots.
The biggest flashpoint came between Broc Feeney and Chaz Mostert, who had multiple bouts of side-to-side contact on the back straight.
Feeney eventually won that battle but was then powerless to stop Walkinshaw’s Ryan Wood from stealing the final podium spot.
Wood subsequently engaged in another spirited Walkinshaw versus Triple Eight battle with Will Brown for second place.
Brown hung on thanks to some robust defence at the Turn 11 hairpin in which there was again multiple bouts of contact.
While Brown and Wood brushed off their clash post-race, Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton was critical of Mostert’s driving.
“The Chaz one was in my opinion out of order, because he just steered hard into him on the straight,” he said.
“That one was a bit silly, a bit uncalled for.”
Feeney ended up fourth having also earlier endured a scare when his engine briefly lost power.
Dutton indicated that was the result of an electrical issue, with the team set to change a component – rather than the entire engine – before the second race.
“We don’t know why it’s happened, but you can see what happened, so we’re changing a component,” he said.
“With these quick turnarounds, you don’t have time to deep, deep dive, but we’ll change the part that had the issue and then keep trying to understand later.”
Feeney suffered an electrical issue at the 2025 Adelaide Grand Final in which he memorably lost the championship to Mostert.
This article first appeared on Speedcafe.com, a sister site to MotorRacing.com.