Having mysteriously missed the opening two rounds and then proven largely anonymous since his comeback, the form surge has raised even more questions of the Erebus driver and team.
While the first of those items might forever remain unexplained, Kostecki is firm in his views on why his winning ways have returned at the pointy end of the season.
And it’s not to do with a shift in desire or the relief of having sorted his future with Dick Johnson Racing – a deal that was announced just before his form took flight.
“I guess there’s lots of different opinions out there, where the form was and vice versa,” said Kostecki this week on SEN’s The Driver’s Seat.
“But truth be told, I guess the first round I came back at New Zealand on the Sunday, I was in the Shootout and I started on the second row.
“So, I think it was more so just catching up to where everyone was, there was a few [off-season] aero changes, whatnot, and the car sort of just fell behind a little bit.”
While there were flashes of speed, Kostecki clocked just one top 10 finish – a podium in Darwin – across his first eight races back over the Taupo, Perth, Darwin and Townsville weekends.
A pair of top 10s at Sydney Motorsport Park was followed by a fifth in the Saturday race at Symmons Plains, where the team appeared to shake off reliability gremlins that had also hindered progress.
The Sunday race in Tasmania appeared a new low; an early tangle with David Reynolds costing him multiple laps before a trio of penalties for the contact, a pit lane collision and pit lane speeding.
But it was the #1 Camaro’s speed while running three laps down on that Sunday at Symmons Plains that set the foundations for what followed.
“Once we sort of found our feet on the Sunday of Tasmania, we hit the ground running going into Sandown and just built a little bit of momentum that we had there,” he continued.
“And obviously, went into Bathurst and had a really, really good car and dominated that weekend. And it’s just starting to carry over.
“It’s just that little bit of momentum and getting the car back in the window leads to success for me. I’ve been sort of pretty happy with the car the last few rounds.”
The root of the form swing was described by engineer George Commins in the wake of the Gold Coast win as “a bit of a change in philosophy with the car, the way we approach the set-up.
“We’ve put ourselves in a different window, keep exploring it and making it better and better.”
At Bathurst the car was fast from the outset of practice. On the Gold Coast, Kostecki and Commins transformed its qualifying speed from Saturday to Sunday.
It’s the bond with Commins, who has engineered Kostecki since they both joined Erebus and will move with the driver to DJR next year, that’s at the heart of the turnaround.
“There’s lots of different ways you can go about it,” Kostecki said when asked of how the pair approach tuning the car.
“But we try to stay methodical as possible and try to pick apart the car as much as we can, and brainstorm ideas and run through everything over multiple times.
“George and I have had a good history together. He knows by the tone of my voice how big of a change it is that we need.
“Sometimes we have to push him a little bit, but he knows what I need by the tone of my voice. He did a fantastic job on the weekend.
“We actually had a really good race car on the Saturday and passed, I think, five or six cars in the Saturday race.
“I was really struggling over one lap across the weekend, so he made a bunch of changes going into qualifying and then again into the Shootout. It really just lit the thing on fire.
“That’s how we sort of work. It’s all based on trust and a relationship that we’ve been building on for the last few years.”
Kostecki sits 19th in the championship heading into next month’s Adelaide 500 finale – an event where he scored two pole positions and secured the title last year.
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