BRODIE Kostecki’s campaign to maintain the Supercars championship lead hit an early hurdle on home soil yesterday, only for teammate Will Brown to come to the rescue.
It’s been a brilliant start to the season for Kostecki and Erebus Motorsport, but the #99 Coca-Cola Camaro was sidelined when the other 24 cars headed out for the sole practice session at Wanneroo Raceway.
The cause was a brake issue that suddenly reared its head.
A couple of early red flags did help minimise the track time Kostecki missed, at least.
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“It was unfortunate, Brodie had a little issue with the car. We lost the first 15 minutes, let the other boys clean the track, so it wasn’t all bad,” Erebus CEO Barry Ryan smiled.
That delay still was costly, although Ryan is confident that Brown’s efforts will help Kostecki.
“We probably missed the race run we wanted to do (with Car #99) but Will backed us up on that and did a really good race run so we know what to expect out of the car,” he said.
“The best thing is the two guys drive very similar and can drive each other’s cars so when we learn something on one car, we can transfer it to the other car and it has been working, so it’s really good.”
Ryan also spoke of how he’s feeling about Erebus’ blistering start to the season.
“It’s funny… I thought it would be a relief but it’s actually not,” he said.
“It’s like we’ve ticked that box, now we have got to aim higher: we have got to win this championship, not just compete and think ‘let’s take another year to see if we can win a championship’.
“We have got to win it this year, so we’re not going to rest on it. So the pressure is on probably more than ever.
“Even though the workshop is very relaxed and the drivers are relaxed, it’s probably me that’s got a few sleepless nights making sure we don’t look like fools when we come to Perth like this and maybe not win.
“We want to make sure that we don’t go up and down the ladder, we want to stay consistently in that top five – that’s how you win championships on history. You have got to be about 4.2 on average.”
A three-part qualifying session starting at 11:10am local time (1:10pm AEST) will set the grid for this afternoon’s 42-lap race.
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