Brodie Kostecki’s increasing maturity is evident to his co-driver for the past three seasons, David Russell.

The 25-year-old has never been paired with anyone else in the enduros since Erebus Motorsport promoted him from a co-driver gig himself to full-time competition in 2021.

They shared a podium that time around in the Repco Bathurst 1000 and finished four seconds away from another at Mount Panorama last year.

However, though Kostecki’s talent has long been apparent, it is this year that he has become a consistent threat for victory, leading the Supercars Championship upon arrival at this weekend’s Penrite Oil Sandown 500 and now having topped Friday practice.

On what he has seen of the West Australian since 2021, Russell quipped initially, “Well, the first year we teamed up, we got a podium, so that sort of worked alright for ‘Bush’.

“But no, look, from being the third year now, you can just see, I guess, the maturity,” he added.

“Not that he was that immature before but he’s got the runs on the board now.

“He’s also had a few seasons to be able to sort of embed himself with the team and obviously with George [Commins, Race Engineer] as well.

“That’s very, very evident, how those guys work together and how the whole team works together, so it’s great to be a part of and just roll on for the weekend.”

While Kostecki has just the one Sandown 500 start to his name, the southeast Melbourne circuit contains some positive memories, being the scene of his first Dunlop Super2 Series race win and also his first Supercars Championship podium in a weather-affected sprint race.

In the past 24 hours, he topped practice by the very slim margin of 0.0003s but had pitted when he looked on the better what would prove the fastest lap of the session.

“I didn’t really gel with [the Sandown circuit] too well over the last two years,” admitted Kostecki.

“But, the cars have rolled out really speedy and it just seems like everyone’s gelling really well together and seems like we can’t do too much wrong.

“It’s only Friday, but [the] car feels really speedy [and] D-Russ did an awesome job in his co-driver session, so we’ll just keep our heads down for the final practice [today] and go into qualifying.”

Erebus is a rarity in the field in so much that it has an unchanged enduro driver line-up relative to 2022, which Kostecki believes is also paying dividends amid the big change from Gen2 to Gen3.

That was evidenced by the fact that Will Brown, who again pairs up with Jack Perkins, put the #9 Coca-Cola Camaro third on the timesheet in Friday practice.

“I was actually really excited going to this weekend having a warm-up going to Bathurst and I think the continuity between us four is important with these cars,” remarked Kostecki.

“Everyone knows each other quite well and it just seems real easy at the moment.

“Driver changes, we all know what we’re like and I’m just looking forward to Sunday.”

Practice 4 starts this morning at 10:45 local time/AEST, followed later in the day by qualifying and a top 10 shootout.