For the first time in a decade, Brodie Kostecki was behind the wheel of a stock car in NASCAR competition when he made his Cup Series début at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday. Although it began on a disastrous note when he crashed in qualifying, he fought his way through the order from last to finish twenty-second.
The Supercars Championship leader had shown decent pace prior to his qualifying accident when he set the sixth best time in Group B—the same group as fellow Supercars driver Shane van Gisbergen—and eleventh overall during the session’s first round. However, he overdrove the car exiting turn eleven and spun into the outside wall, resulting in damage that forced him into a backup vehicle.
Although a caution came out on lap three, it ended up being the only one of the day. Without yellow flags to bunch up the field, the field was generally strung out though Kostecki kept up by riding with those like William Byron in the late teens and early twenties.
“It was a pretty interesting race starting last and missing the havoc at the start,” he recapped. “We got a yellow pretty early in the race and it happened to go green flag the rest of the ways onwards. I think we drove up to around fourteenth or fifteenth, we’re following William Byron through and coming through the field. We were hoping for a light yellow and my team-mate (Kyle Busch) was blowing up and it didn’t quite come, so we pitted and ended up finishing P22. All in all, a fantastic experience.
“Hopefully we get to do it again. We’ll see what happens.”
Kostecki is no stranger to stock cars, having raced late models as a teenager and in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East in 2013 and 2014. He eventually returned to Australia where he ascended through the Supercars ladder, reaching the top rung by 2021. His Erebus Motorsport team is closely associated with Richard Childress Racing, who fielded the #33 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Kostecki at Indianapolis.
Supercars rival van Gisbergen, who already had a Cup start under his belt where he won on début in Chicago, finished tenth. He and Kostecki will now return to Australia for the next Supercars race at The Bend Motorsport Park on 19/20 August. Kostecki has won thrice in 2023 while van Gisbergen sits third in points.