Brodie Kostecki has copped a time penalty on the chin for speeding in the pit lane during Race 15 at the Pizza Hut Winton SuperSprint.
The Erebus Motorsport driver initially finished fifth but was demoted to 13th after the 15-second time addition was imposed for exceeding the 40km/h pit lane speed limit.
That scuppered his hopes of a weekend-best finish having been seventh and 11th in the weekend’s preceding races.
“I’m pretty dirty on myself,” said Kostecki.
“We didn’t really have the best start to the weekend and it was looking to finish fifth or sixth there and to have that happen after the weekend that we had started is pretty horrid from my behalf. Sorry to the team.
“We’ll have to tune a few things up going to the next round. The car was pretty pacy then. I was really happy with the car and we’ll just have to go back and reflect on a few things and I need to sort my speeding out. We’ll sort that out and go hard at the next one.”
It wasn’t the only pit lane incident for the team at Winton Motor Raceway, stable-mate Will Brown incurring a drive-through penalty in Race 13 after his rear wheels spun while in the air.
After the fifth event of the Repco Supercars Championship, Kostecki holds eighth in the standings while Brown is 15th.
Kostecki has just the one podium finish to his name this season, which came at the season-opening Sydney SuperNight.
Since then, the 24-year-old has only been a top five finisher twice (Race 2 and Race 3 of the season). Nevertheless, the Perth-born pilot is optimistic that more podiums will come.
“It’s been pretty good everywhere we’ve been,” said Kostecki.
“It’s just little gremlins here or there that either I’ve made a mistake or the team has made a mistake. We just can’t really package a whole weekend together.
“I think once we start doing that, hopefully we’ll start fighting for podiums a bit more often.”
Erebus Motorsport sits sixth in the teams’ championship. Triple Eight Race Engineering leads Dick Johnson Racing while Tickford Racing sits third.
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