Supercars permitted the car to travel off-site for repairs following a head-on hit with the Turn 2 barrier during qualifying that injured four photographers.
The chassis was stripped at DJR’s Stapylton headquarters before being transported across the highway to chassis specialist Pace Innovations for work on its centre section.
DJR co-owner Ryan Story said the team will complete the repair in its Gold Coast 500 garage as the majority of the spare parts required are at the circuit.
“[Pace owner] Paul Ceprnich and his team have done a great job in their repair, so that’s close to completion now,” Story told Speedcafe on Saturday evening.
“Obviously the front clip was destroyed, but the damage to the actual centre section was minimal – there’s a couple of tubes that have had to be replaced at the front.
“The process from here is to get the car back to the track, where we’ll put a new front clip on it.
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“The mechanics are working on that now, and just getting various bits and pieces out of the container and out of the transporter and stuff that’s come back from the workshop.
“That’ll go together overnight and with any luck we’ll be ready to roll for quali tomorrow morning.”
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DJR sent several crew members from the track with the car, while also calling in home-based staff to assist with the effort.
“We took the car’s number one mechanic and a couple of other experienced blokes away, and effectively left #17 under control with effectively a slightly slimmed down pit crew,” he said.
“Being a local event we’re obviously fortunate to have a lot of our guys [that are not part of the track crew] who volunteered to meet at the shop or to meet it at Pace.”
Kostecki was also part of the process after being cleared by medical staff at the circuit.
“Brodie’s mechanical aptitude and engineering knowledge is second to none amongst the drivers in the field and he was well and truly in there, lending a hand,” he said.
“He was on the tools and it again just highlights the strengths of that bloke, for sure.”
Story is confident the car will be ready for qualifying, with an all-night effort at the track likely.
“We’ll try and get it done in one fell swoop,” he said.
“If we need to send some of the crew to get a quick snooze, or whether we do it in shifts, we’ll work that out once we get it all back.
“But at the moment, all of the required bits and pieces are getting put together, so we’ll be able to make that call as we get deeper into the repair this evening.”
While Pace Innovations has been integral to the repair, Kostecki’s chassis was built by Erebus Motorsport’s Mount Gambier-based fabricator James White.
It’s the second time in 10 years that DJR has faced an overnight repair at the Gold Coast following efforts to get Fabian Coulthard back on track in 2016.
Kostecki will effectively need to win Sunday’s second leg of the Gold Coast 500 to progress to avoid elimination from the Supercars Finals Series.
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