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The Erebus Motorsport steerer has long been considered a genuine talent, and Morris believes he “drives a race car like I’ve never seen anyone drive one before.”
However, with such dramatic technical change from COTF/Gen2 to Gen3, Kostecki’s other skills came to the fore.
Morris told the KTM Summer Grill, “At the start of the year, it was like, ‘Gen3, mate, this is absolutely made for you.
“’Forget about everything else, everyone’s been given a car that they’ve got no simulation on, no historical data… This is old school, mate.
“’Take a set of sidecutters and cut all the sensors off the car and it won’t matter; you could win that race,’ so that’s the way he approached it.
“It was just seat-of-the-pants, old school feedback to his engineer, make some changes, trust what the driver’s thinking about, just get on with it, and that’s what they did.
“For sure, hundred percent, [mechanical knowledge] was the key to that championship,” added the 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner.
“Brodie’s the sort of guy that’s like, ‘I’ve got understeer and this is the area we should look at,’ and he could even nail it down to where he thinks it’s shock, roll bar, or spring, tyre pressure…
“He’s got that much feedback and he can lead you where you need to go and look for the answer, and that’s really it.
“Him and George [Commins, Race Engineering] work really well together and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it again next year.”
Morris has worked with the now 26-year-old for several years, and continues to be a mentor to him.
The 2014 Bathurst 1000 winner says that Kostecki’s potential was apparent from the outset.
“I just saw in Brodie this really raw talent that you don’t see much,” recalled Morris.
“When I first started being around him in the family team, you could tell that he had a really good racing brain.
“A lot of the time, he’d outsmart himself; he’d be thinking that far ahead that he forgot the bit in the middle sometimes.
“So, lots of lessons for him, just to get him focused and get him to where he needed to be.
“And he’s old school. You can give him a car in the corner and it can be in parts… He’s probably the only driver out there who can put a Gen3 car together and do a good job; a better job than most mechanics.
“So, I just saw that in him and he just needed pointing in the right direction and a little bit of confidence, stripped a bit of weight off him, and turned him into a race car driver [who] won the championship.”
Pre-season testing takes place in early-February, with Erebus and the rest of the southern-based teams cutting laps at Winton.
For more from Paul Morris, check out the full episode of the KTM Summer Grill.
