SHANE van Gisbergen is moving on from Supercars, but he’s expecting to see more of its new champion Brodie Kostecki in the years ahead.
Kostecki this year stopped van Gisbergen from winning a fourth Supercars crown before the Kiwi’s departure for the United States and a new career in NASCAR.
Richard Childress, whose team fielded Kostecki in a NASCAR Cup Series race at Indianapolis in August, declared in Adelaide that he plans to run the Australian in more races next season.
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Childress’ desire to run Kostecki on an oval fuelled suggestions that the driver – who has one more year on his existing Erebus deal – may ultimately follow the same path as van Gisbergen.
Asked by V8 Sleuth if he hopes Kostecki will eventually join him in the US, van Gisbergen said: “I think he wants to go.
“I think he wants to do a few more years here, maybe, but he’s definitely good enough to be there.
“You could see glimpses of his brilliance at Indy, and he has experience on ovals.
“I’m pretty sure he’s doing a few (NASCAR) races next year and I’ll be hoping he goes well.”
The respect between van Gisbergen and Kostecki was obvious in 2023.
They’d crossed paths plenty as Kostecki rose through the ranks, including the youngster’s maiden test of a main game car taking place aboard the #97 Commodore in 2019.
After two building years in the championship for Kostecki, the duo finally went head-to-head in the first Gen3 season – highlighted by a brilliant battle at Wanneroo in April.
“I’ve known him for years and helped him come in through the ranks a little bit, a small part,” van Gisbergen said of Kostecki, having also spent time together at the Norwell Motorplex.
“Seeing how good he is and how technical he is as a driver and the way he understands what we need… when we race on the simulator, he’s doing all the sim set-ups and stuff.
“He’s very smart with what a car needs and obviously he’s a good driver as well, he works hard at it and the team’s been good this year.
“We’ve seen the last few years they made mistakes and this year they didn’t make any, they’ve done really well.
“I think they had a pretty faultless year. I don’t think they had many bad weekends.”
By contrast, van Gisbergen and Triple Eight had a handful of bad weekends – including a rare double-DNF in the Adelaide finale.
Van Gisbergen’s season was hampered by a controversial disqualification from the Newcastle season-opener and ongoing dislike of the steering feel in the Gen3 cars.
“It’s been up and down, but still pretty good, we won a lot of races,” he said of his own season, which included a Bathurst 1000 win. “Even though second sucks, 23 others want to be in second.
“So I guess we’ve still got to be pretty happy about it. It would have been good to have more of a challenge (in Adelaide), but unfortunately, we just weren’t fast enough.”
Van Gisbergen will soon move to the United States ahead of a development-focused 2024 NASCAR campaign that will include Cup and Xfinity Series outings.
