Kai Allen snatches Super2 win at Bathurst, Zak Best hit with time penalty

As the race got under way on Saturday afternoon, it looked as if Best had got a ripper start and by the end of the first lap he was already 1.5 seconds up the road from Zane Morse.

But his start was too good to be true, with the announcement that the #17 Ford Mustang was under investigation coming over the radio from race control during the second lap.

The bad news was confirmed a lap later, with Best dealt a five-second penalty for a jump start.

His team chose to keep the news of the penalty from him until the closing stages of the race, wanting him to remain cautious, preserve his tyres and then see what he had left to make a dash at the end.

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But Zane Morse in the car behind was well aware of the penalty hanging over his rival's head, and kept applying the pressure to keep the gap under five seconds.

By the middle of the race, the gap was down to under 0.9 seconds, but soon Best was extending his lead again.

As he pushed it out to more than three seconds, the fairy tale came crashing down for Morse, who was on the brink of his first-ever Super2 win.

Morse rolled out of the throttle down Conrod Straight and veered into pit lane, the heartbreak evident in his eyes as the win slipped through his hands.

The incident handed Best the five-second lead he needed to hold on to first place, but then as he made his way across the top of the mountain on the penultimate lap his lead diminished to a charging Allen.

The final lap seemingly lit a fire under Best, who again pushed to extend his lead, but it just wasn't enough, handing the win to Allen.

The time penalty pushed Best back to second, while Zach Bates crossed the line in third.

It was a valiant effort from Best, who also found himself battling fuel issues throughout the race on top of his costly start.

"It's a bit disappointing. I made a big mistake off the start and jumped it, and just made the race really hard, but having to fuel save in a Dunlop Series race is not something I would have thought we'd be doing, which is pretty unusual," he said.

"I was max fuel save pretty much every lap and Zane was pushing me along the way and ... it just made things a bit more difficult, so you can't actually use the raw speed the car had that we showed in qualifying."

While it was a great outcome for Allen, he didn't want it to come as the result of bad fortune for the two drivers ahead of him on the circuit.

"It's pretty cool to end off our Saturday, but it's a bit unfortunate for the guys, Zak and Zane - it's a bit crap for the race to end that way," he said.

"But, yeah, just hung in there and then came away with the round win."

Best was leading Kai Allen in the championship by 42 points coming into the second Super2 race of the weekend.

The result has closed the gap slightly, with the pair now separated by just 30 points.

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