Supercars Championship leader Brown was next onto the race track after Kostecki and was thus warming up as the Erebus Motorsport driver completed his hot lap.

Speaking during his in-car television interview, Kostecki spotted his former team-mate just up the road and said, “I might just drive up to the back of him, flash my lights a little bit, and see how he goes.

“We’ll see if we can distract him a little bit. Here we go; bit of a flash.”

Kostecki had set a 1:06.0579s which put him second to Broc Feeney in the other Red Bull Ampol Chevrolet, before Brown slotted into third with a 1:06.0687s on the final lap of the session.

After he hopped out of the #1 Camaro, ‘Bush’ laughed, “I’d like to think I did [rattle Brown] but I’m sure I didn’t.

“He likes to play pretty stupid, old Will, but he’s pretty smart; he’s a pilot.”

Brown recounted, jocularly, “He completely threw me off. I was like, ‘What’s going…?’

“Nah, I’m joking. I had big Bush in the headlights, bloody flashing me. Good on him, I kind of liked it.

“I was like, ‘Good on him, he’s playing the game, I like it.”

On a more serious note, second in the shootout was a welcome return to the pointy end of the grid for the 2023 champion, who missed the first two events of the season.

Kostecki was then hamstrung by mechanical problems both at Wanneroo and on the first two days of the Darwin Triple Crown, including a steering rack issue in Friday afternoon qualifying and ongoing powertrain dramas which led to a Saturday night engine change.

#1 Race Engineer George Commins said, “The circuit’s moving around a lot [and] the engine dramas we’ve had have sort of put us on the back foot quite a bit.

“We sort of came out of the gate strong this morning and probably de-tuned it a little bit then for the shootout, so we’ll see what we can do for the race.

“But, it’s moving around a lot and we haven’t really known where we’ve been with the issues we’ve been having, so it’s been hard.”

Kostecki remarked, “I’m just looking forward to the race in general. I think just being out there and being off the front row today is pretty exciting for me and hopefully we can do a pretty good job of tuning the car up for the race.

“I see every little thing as an opportunity for me so, if there’s a hole, I’ll go for it; if not, then I’ll make one.”

Race start is scheduled for 15:10 local time/15:40 AEST.

UPDATE: Kostecki investigated by stewards