Brodie Kostecki has spoken at the Taupō 400 on his return to the Supercars Championship with Erebus Motorsport.
It’s the second public appearance for Kostecki after testing with the Supercars team at Winton Motor Raceway.
It was confirmed on April 8 that the 26-year-old would make his comeback to the championship at Taupō Motorsport Park on April 19-21.
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The Perth-born driver spoke with Mark Larkham, a former driver turned team owner, who said “It’s just so cool to have you back, mate, but I want to get straight into the racing stuff, let’s park all the other stuff.”
He added, “First of all, you did a test. You did how many kilometres, how many miles at Winton, and how did that go?”
Kostecki said he completed upwards of 250km, equal to a race distance.
“I just want to thank everyone for their support and all that and it’s great to be back,” said Kostecki.
“It’s been great coming back to New Zealand as well, it’s fantastic the last few days seeing all the fans. It feels like we’re at Bathurst.
“It’s just great to see so much support.”
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Asked whether there was any “rust” in his system from being sidelined for five months, Kostecki said. “There’s always a little bit.”
“After about the second or third lap you sort of find your feet again,” said Kostecki before practice on Friday.
“I started to feel pretty comfortable with the car again. We did a pretty big test plan and got through a lot of stuff that we wanted to try.
“I was pretty happy by the end of the day but the real test is going to be coming up in 10 or 15 minutes.”
Kostecki has zero points to his name while former teammate Will Brown leads the championship on 575 points.
Last year’s championship was won by more than a round’s worth of points by Kostecki, who remained coy when asked about his championship aspirations.
“You’ve just go to take it round by round,” he said.
“I’m just focusing on today for example then there’s tomorrow. You can’t skip today just to get to tomorrow. We’ll just take it step by step and I’m confident in the team.
“The boys always do a really good job and we’ll just take it round by round and try get as many trophies as we can. There are still a few big races I’d like to tick off.”
Kostecki will race alongside Jack Le Brocq.
