Brodie Kostecki says his achievement of winning a Repco Supercars Championship title is finally starting to sink in.
The 26-year-old delivered Erebus Motorsport’s first drivers’ championship when he took an unassailable lead in the standings in Race 27 at the Vailo Adelaide 500, before he and Will Brown secured the teams’ title on the final day of the season.
Having finished sixth in Race 27, Kostecki was somewhat preoccupied on Saturday evening about how he and engineer George Commins could smarten up his Coca-Cola Camaro, rather than basking in championship glory.
Speaking on the morning after the final race of the season, the magnitude of what he has achieved in 2023 was starting to become apparent.
“I think last night it started to sink in a little bit,” he said.
“I started to celebrate with the team and we enjoyed ourselves last night and that’s when it really started to sink in as well, around my team members.
“Seeing all the hard work that they’ve put in and seeing the emotions that they had last night is when it started to really sink in for myself.”
In fact, while Kostecki qualified on pole position for both races at the Adelaide Parklands Circuit, his competitiveness in those 78-lappers was noticeably down.
“[It was a] bit of a strange weekend for that, but motorsport’s pretty crazy at times,” remarked the West Australian.
“We had a bit of a lull halfway through the season where we, as a team, had a few issues going on, and that’s how the game goes sometimes; it’s very hard to predict.
“We just tried to focus on ourselves and do the best we could and we didn’t have the best weekend but to still come away with the drivers’ and teams’ championship’s just amazing.”
Have raced Car #99 in all 38 of his Supercars Championship event starts for Erebus thus far, Kostecki confirmed he will take up the right to use #1 in 2024.
“I think it’s the best way to represent what the team’s done this year and what I’ve been able to accomplish this year, so I think it’s time we bring back the number one,” declared ‘Bush’.
#1 has only been used once since the end of the 2018 season, when Shane van Gisbergen made the switch from his usual #97 in last year’s Adelaide 500 given he was driving a ZB Commodore in the final Australian Touring Car Championship event for Holden.
Jamie Whincup was the last regular #1 on the grid, following his seventh and final championship triumph in 2017, after which Scott McLaughlin stuck with Dick Johnson’s trademark #17 in 2019 and 2020 before leaving for IndyCar.
As he did after his maiden title in 2016, van Gisbergen kept #97 last year and this year, save for the aforementioned exception and also the 2021 Bathurst 1000, when he used #888 to mark Roland Dane’s farewell from Triple Eight Race Engineering.
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