BRODIE Kostecki has given a glowing assessment of the new MARC GT after putting the prototype through its first laps in anger.
Kostecki was out at Queensland Raceway on Thursday to steer the car, with MARC Cars Australia and PACE Innovations overseeing.
“The first time they took it out, it was more about just making sure the diagnostics and whatnot were all good,” the Erebus Motorsport Supercars driver told V8 Sleuth.
“It was good to be able to drive it and just go full steam and see what it could do.
“We spent the first half of (Thursday) without the front clip, so it was missing the whole front fascia of the car, but that showed up just after lunchtime so we were able to put that on and do some proper laps towards the end of the day.”
The results left him nothing short of impressed.
“Really, it’s an amazing product,” the 24-year-old continued.
“It’s a very cheap race car for how fast it goes, so at this point, in its first hitout, it’s faster than a GT3 car around QR which is pretty amazing.
“It has got 550 horsepower and it’s got an LS engine as the base, so the costs of running the car are going to be quite low.
“It’s a pretty amazing piece of machinery and the guys at PACE Innovations have done a bloody cool job of putting it together.
“It’s sort of similar sounding to what would be a DTM-style car, one of the older DTM cars, and quite similar looking as well.”
The fastest time set by a GT World Challenge Australia car during last weekend’s SpeedSeries event at QR was a 1:07.6075s by Garth Tander in an Audi LMS Evo – no match for the MARC prototype.
“The best time of the day was a 1:07.4s on 40-lap old tyres,” Kostecki revealed.
“It’s definitely very quick, so the car has definitely got the capabilities to be going into the ‘6s, so hopefully next test day we might hit that mark.”
Kostecki, who heaped praise on PACE boss Paul Ceprnich, confirmed he’s registered interest to continue driving the testing program.
