As Brodie Kostecki nears the end of his tenure, Erebus Motorsport is back to its winning best and Dick Johnson Racing is mired in the midpack.
The frayed relationship between the respective parties has long been intimated and for reasons never fully explained publicly by anyone, Kostecki sat out the first two rounds of 2024.
Kostecki returned for the third event in Taupō where Erebus Motorsport CEO Barry Ryan put a stake in the ground – the drivers’ championship was a distant dream but the team would win the Bathurst 1000. He was true to his word.
After winning the Great Race, that momentum continued on the streets of Surfers Paradise where Kostecki enjoyed his first solo win of the season. So what changed?
“It’s been a bit of a momentum shift in the last three or four months. Everybody is happy and excited to be racing again,” said Ryan after the Gold Coast 500.
“At the start of the year was a shit fight. We’ve got to be honest about it, we dug deep and we’re all in a good head space including this champion.
“I’m just so proud of the way he’s got through the year.
“We had a mission to win Bathurst as soon as he stepped back in the car before New Zealand and that was the focus. We smashed that and we’re going to smash the next two races too.”
Kostecki’s success comes at a time when his future team, Dick Johnson Racing, can only lay claim to being the fourth best Ford team and fifth overall.
Will Davison and Anton De Pasquale are both winless this year and have just three podiums between them.
After their drivers’ and teams’ championship triumph in 2023, on paper, Erebus looked to have fallen off the boil in 2024.
The team has spent much of the season languishing in the teams’ championship and was as low as 10th, but with one round remaining have risen to sit sixth.
Ryan said the team never “lacked” car pace but conceded the team’s headspace played a part in its downturn and subsequent comeback.
“There’s a lot of mental side to this sport and getting everybody’s brains back into gear,” he explained.
“Like I said, getting through the crap we went through, it takes a lot out of everybody and a lot out of Brodie as well.
“He’s going to another team, which is very unfortunate and I’d love to keep him because we could win another championship with the way him and George are working together – but we’ll reset again and we’ve got young Cooper.
“I can’t wait to put him in this fast car and just see what he can do. We’ll do it again, whether it’s next year or the year after. We’ll back ourselves as a team to keep winning.”
Ryan maintains that any “wounds” that were created were not of his or Kostecki’s making.
Those at the centre of the saga may have indeed moved on, that much can be true – and Kostecki even said after his Bathurst 1000 win that with time his relationships have improved.
He does, however, join a team still struggling to find its feet in the wake of Team Penske departing and taking its three-time champion Scott McLaughlin with them to IndyCar.
What Brodie Kostecki does have is a championship-winning track record and an engineer in George Commins who he knows he can win the title with again.
Dick Johnson Racing has previously conceded Gen3 and its development was something of a distraction.
Kostecki will leave a team on the up, but perhaps the scars of the past can’t be forgotten entirely and perhaps trophies aren’t enough justification in his mind to part ways.
Soon, he’ll have a chance to bring one of Supercars’ cultural icons back to the top step of the podium.
