Supercars Championship great Shane van Gisbergen took the NASCAR world by storm when he won in his stock car début at Chicago in July. Current Supercars title contender Brodie Kostecki hopes to replicate the feat next month.
On Wednesday, Auto Action‘s Andrew Clarke reported Kostecki is “set to announce” that he will run the Cup Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on 13 August.
A team was not suggested beyond the fact that it “looks certain” to be a Chevrolet, which Erebus Motorsport fields for him in Supercars. Erebus is close with Cup team Richard Childress Racing as the former’s ex-engineer Andrew Dickinson currently works on RCR driver Kyle Busch‘s #8 crew; in June, Erebus personnel including Kostecki watched Busch win in person at Gateway. RCR also owns a former VF Commodore Supercar for testing purposes and has occasionally fielded a part-time #33 car, most recently in 2022 for Austin Hill.
Unlike van Gisbergen, Kostecki is no stranger to NASCAR. As a teenager in 2013 and 2014, he competed in what is now the ARCA Menards Series West, finishing eighteenth in the latter’s standings with four top tens, two poles at Iowa and Watkins Glen, and a best run of fifth in the finale at Dover.
In June 2022, he told Speedcafe about hoping to run a Cup race in 2023 on the heels of attending that year’s Gateway event, explaining he hoped to “spread [his] wings a bit and just try to race as much as possible.” A report from V8 Sleuth in May suggested Kostecki has also been in talks with RCR and Joe Gibbs Racing about possibly racing in the Xfinity Series. By June, his manager Nathan Cayzer said a deal was all but signed.
The Cup Series has garnered interest from the overseas motorsport world amid an increase in road courses and the Next Gen car‘s shared traits with touring cars and Supercars. Van Gisbergen’s immediate success can be attributed to both facets catering to his strengths, especially as his win in Chicago came in the inaugural Cup race on a street circuit. While van Gisbergen piloted the #91 Chevrolet for RCR ally Trackhouse Racing, the car has no further starts planned in 2023.
Now in his third full season of competition, Kostecki sits second in the Supercars Championship behind Erebus team-mate Will Brown with two wins at Melbourne. He finished seventh in the 2022 points battle with a pair of podiums.