Supercars Championship leader Brodie Kostecki has taken a heat win among mixed results after two nights of Sprintcar competition last weekend.
The Erebus Motorsport driver, who won the Larry Perkins Trophy at Albert Park to take the Supercars Championship lead from Chaz Mostert, spent last Saturday night at Archerfield Speedway near Brisbane, Queensland, before taking the John Weatherall #Q95 Boost Mobile-backed Sprintcar to Hi-Tec Oils Toowoomba Speedway on Easter Sunday.
The Saturday run saw Kostecki post the fastest time in the Group F Time Trial at Archerfield, his 12.468s time with a top speed of 115.49mph [185.87km/h] solid enough for 21st overall once the times were inverted across the 37-car field for the Round 7 of the East Coast Logistics Sprintcars.
Yet there was little success on the night, Kostecki instead taking the second heat win of his speedway career at Toowoomba – the site of his first heat victory back in February – on Easter Sunday
“That first night, yeah, just got involved in pretty much crashes all night basically. I only got like, probably, 10 laps for the whole night and then the night after at Toowoomba Speedway had a really good night,” Kostecki told Speedcafe.
There were 35 entrants in the Grand Final of the Ultimate Sprintcar Championship at Toowoomba.
“[I] Won a heat race and came third in the next heat race from fifth, and started tenth in the Feature and was up to seventh or sixth at one point and dropped back in the later stages to 13th.”
“I won a heat race – it’s obviously good when you win something – but it’s only the feature race that really counts,” he said.
Lachlan McHugh won the feature race ahead of Luke Oldfield and Ben Atkinson Junior.
In January, Supercars rival and 2022 champion Shane van Gisbergen won his first Sprintcar race at an event in New Zealand.
Similarly, Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters has also been engaged in recent Sprintcar competition, while three-times Supercar champion Scott McLaughlin formed a team that took on the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic.
Kostecki says that his goals are to simply spend more time behind the wheel of the Boost Mobile Sprintcar.
“It’s a pretty hard sport to – you know, it’s kind of similar to Supercars. In a way, you can’t really go out and go practice, right, because you need to practice on the night that you’re racing on because that’s how you learn here with the track changing and whatnot.
“It’s more about just challenging myself, just seeing how quickly I can get up to speed and get more towards the front.
“So I’ve still got a fair way to go. They say you need like a two-to-three-year apprenticeship to drive these things before you can sort of become a contender.
“[I’m] Just seeing how I go, and I’m just really enjoying racing as much as I can.”
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