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Find your frequency‘I’ve been there’: Radisich sympathises with De Pasquale after Bathurst heartbreak
Sport Nation • October 12th, 2026 1:08 pm
Anton De Pasquale was left to lament a team error that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory | Photo: Dan Himbrechts/AAP
New Zealand motorsport great Paul Radisich says he feels for Anton De Pasquale after the driver came within 6km of his first Bathurst 1000 win before running out of fuel.
De Pasquale’s misfortune handed the lead to Dick Johnson Racing’s (DJR) Brodie Kostecki, who went on to win the race.
As a former DJR driver himself, Radisich knows how cruel Bathurst can be, having experienced his own late-race heartbreak on Mount Panorama.
“I feel for Anton because I've been there and felt that pain, to be so close, half a lap really away from winning the race is an extremely hard pill to swallow,” he told Sport Nation Mornings.
The realisation hits home for Adrian Burgess that Anton De Pasquale wouldn't be finishing | Photo: Mark Evans/AAP
Radisich led the Bathurst 1000 for much of the 1999 race, only to suffer a puncture with 10 laps remaining.
“It just went downhill from there," he said.
“I've been and raced at Bathurst 19 times and I never got to stand on the top step. So it's one of those races when they get away, they get away.”
And it’s a pain that has never left his side.
“To watch Bathurst, I can feel every bump, every turn, and I have to say the disappointment still rides with me and it's something you learn to accept.
“All you can say in life is I did the best that I could possibly do at that particular time and that's it.”
Radisich said it was a miscalculation on fuel that proved costly for Team 18 team, after urging De Pasquale to complete his final pit stop on lap 139 when he was already 10 seconds clear of Brown and Kostecki.
“They had the time to throw another second of fuel in it,” he claimed.
“If they put another second of fuel in it, they wouldn't have had any type of issues and look, human error happened, and they paid the ultimate price.
“They made an error on mathematics, on calculation. They got it wrong. When the fuel goes in, it's timed. So possibly somebody got the timing wrong.”
Brodie Kostecki and Todd Hazelwood celebrate their epic Bathurst triumph | Photo: Mark Evans/AAP
Kostecki had fresh tyres in the closing stages, but Radisich was unsure whether he would have caught De Pasquale, who had been pulling away before the fuel ran out.
“Kostecki, he's a talent and he had new tyres at the right end of the race and I'm not too sure he would have caught Anton, I mean he was pulling away but the mountain chose the Shell team and Kostecki to take out the win.”
Listen to the full interview below:
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