Brodie Kostecki s returning to race in his native Perth for the first time in three years, but there’s no home-track advantage when Shane van Gisbergen’s on the grid.
The reigning champion has started the season in ominous form. He’s won six of nine races to leave the previous round in Melbourne with a 133-point lead over Anton de Pasquale, a larger advantage than he had this time last season on his way to an emphatic second title.
But it’s not just the results that have stamped Van Gisbergen’s name all over the season, it’s the way he’s gone about his racing.
Bold, brash and with no shortage of biff, he’s bullishly bullied his way through the pack race after race to assert his dominance over the field.
It started with some strong overtakes at the hairpin in Tasmania and continued last time out at the Australian Grand Prix, where he came from 23rd on the grid to finish on the podium.
He’s been able to make it look easy, and having fired to such a strong start this season, he’s given the impression he’s built a psychological advantage over the field.
“The media and the commentators play it up a bit more than what it is,” Brodie Kostecki told Fox Sports. “He’s definitely in some drivers’ heads — as he should be.
“We race the same drivers throughout the whole year, so everyone gets to know what someone’s nick or knack is.
“Shane seems to find himself in races where he’s coming back through the pack quite a lot and tends to bump and rub people quite often. He’s very smart and understands the rules and knows how to exploit them to their full potential of them and use them to his advantage.
“It works out for him. But that’s what happens when you have someone that has a lot of experience and has a good team around him and can really just push forwards.”
But whereas Van Gisbergen’s driving has some punters fired up for taking the old ‘rubbing is racing’ adage too seriously — Cam Waters flipped him off as he got overtaken in Tasmania, though he admitted afterwards the pass was legal — Kostecki has no problem with it.
“I absolutely love it,” he said. “I just wish I could be further up the front so I could get more involved in it.
“I really had a smile on my face when I saw him doing what he was doing. The only thing that could make it better for myself would be to be banging doors with him.”
STILL IN THE TITLE FIGHT
Kostecki has made no secret of his aim to be fighting at the front of the Supercars field in his second full-time main-game season.
The 24-year-old took three podiums last year, including third at the Bathurst 1000, and scored his maiden pole and another second-place finish in Sydney this March, after which he declared Erebus could propel him to championship glory in 2022.
“I’d like to think [we‘re championship contenders],” he said at the time. “We have the tools there for us now.”
But the season hasn’t continued on quite that same trajectory. The team couldn’t get a handle on its one-lap pace in Tasmania despite being rapid in race conditions, and Melbourne offered mixed results on an unpredictable weekend. His best finish since Sydney has been a sole fourth at Symmons Plains.
It leaves Kostecki fifth on the table and 250 points off the title lead, but his optimism is undiminished.
“I still think the same thing,” he said. “The car speed’s been pretty good throughout the year. The Melbourne grand prix, the last race, the car was really fast, it just took us too long to get there.
“We’ve just had a few small little teething issues on the sides that have hindered us a little bit, but at the same time I need to make that I’m doing the best job I can to maximise what’s underneath me.
“I think once we smooth those areas out a little bit — and I can try to work on a few things myself to try and maximise the most we have out of the car when it’s not quite right — we should be able to run in the top three, top five quite consistently. Hopefully a race win comes soon as well.”
But inevitably Kostecki’s mind turns back to the common denominator of 2022.
“It’s going to be really difficult to beat the man that’s standing at the top at the moment, just because they’re so consistent round in, round out,” he said.
“They don’t really have any faults. They always just put the races together no matter where they qualify. That’s something that we’ve been lacking a little bit I guess this year to be able to compete with them.
“We’ve sort of been a bit up and down this year at Erebus.
“Being more consistent is a bit of a tricky one because someone like Shane’s team have had a very good car over the last few years and they’ve slowly built on their package, whereas we’ve had to really swing the bat a couple of times to find our stride.
“It’s more about just learning how to combat challenges and everyone putting their heads together and trying to come up with the best solution possible and not taking the whole weekend as well to sort of find the right solutions.”
The pressure to be perfect will be high at the Perth SuperNight. Not only is it a two-day event with only two half-hour practice sessions, but it’ll be the first time the Supercars have raced here since 2019.
And as a day-night round, Wanneroo Raceway will change dramatically from sunlight to moonlight. Degradation is always high here, even after it was resurfaced in 2019, and getting the balance right for races spread throughout the two days in changing temperatures will be key to claiming an overall strong result.
Much has changed since Supercars last raced here. There are seven drivers who have never taken to the track in top-tier machinery — Perth-born Kostecki is one of them — and Broc Feeney is yet to race at Wanneroo in any class.
“It‘s quite a funny one,” Kostecki said. “I haven’t done too many laps around my so-called home track, but luckily [Wanneroo] is kind of a simpler track on the calendar.
“It’s a very short track roughly between 5o and 55-second lap times, so she’s a real easy one to learn.
“Perth is a very different track to the ones on the calendar. There’s a lot of undulation throughout the track, and it’s also got the biggest braking zone on the calendar as well going into the final corner, so she’s really steep going downhill and it’s a really big stop going into the final corner.
“We’ve had a few dramas with braking stability in the car throughout the year, so hopefully that’s all fixed going into this round. It should be a strong one for us.”
WHAT’S THE FORM GUIDE?
It’s been so long between visits that Scott McLaughlin is the track’s reigning winner — in fact he’s won five of the last six races held at Wanneroo. His 2019 teammate, Fabian Coulthard, completed the full six for a DJR clean sweep.
A Holden has also won only two of the last 14 starts; Jamie Whincup was the last to win two in a row for the brand back in 2016.
Good news for those hoping to challenge Shane van Gisbergen? Perhaps — and the Giz has never won in Perth.
But much has changed in the intervening years since Supercars last went west, making history only so useful an indicator.
What we do know is that a Holden has won every race so far this season, most of them at the hands of Van Gisbergen, for the best start to a season by any manufacturer since 2000. It puts the marque on 599 Australian Touring Car Championship victories, bringing up a potential historic 600th this weekend.
The Holden teams will have three races to do it, with one on Saturday night after three-segment qualifying earlier in the day. Two races follow on Sunday afternoon, their grids set by two 10-minute free qualifying sessions. The soft tyre is the only one on offer this weekend.
Three is just enough races for the Ford Mustang to clock up 50 races as a model if it manages to sweep the weekend — perhaps at the hands of Cameron Waters, who will celebrate his 200th start in the weekend’s second race.
History, form or home advantage? It could go any way this weekend in Wanneroo.
