BRODIE Kostecki and his Erebus Motorsport colleagues saw Shane van Gisbergen’s NASCAR Cup Series debut victory coming.
SVG stunned the motorsport world with his heroics last July at the Chicago Street Course, laying the foundations for a full-time move to the United States this year.
But not everyone was surprised, as Erebus race engineer Tom Moore revealed via Scott Pye and Elliot Barbour’s Apex Hunters United podcast.
Moore was part of an Erebus travelling party to the US in mid-2023, with the Supercars squad having forged an alliance with NASCAR powerhouse Richard Childress Racing.
A month or so before the Chicago race, Kostecki’s performance relative to RCR star Kyle Busch on General Motors’ state-of-the-art NASCAR simulator was telling.
It was then that they knew.
“One day we went to the GM tech centre and Brodie drove the $10 million Cup car simulator… this thing has a more than 180-degree screen with 10 projectors so there’s no mismatch in the imaging,” Moore recalled.
“And then there’s like half a cockpit that has got a proper pedal box and proper clutch, all that sort of stuff. It’s off its head.
“Basically, Bush (Kostecki) got in and he was running around the Sonoma circuit on the sim and Kyle had been there the week before.
“I think he was like two seconds faster after like 10 laps.
“The sim engineers were like ‘hmm, something’s not right here’… they literally went, ‘we need to turn the grip down a little bit because this looks bad on these guys’.
“He was significantly faster, so we all walked out (and knew that Shane would win).”
Braking was responsible for the bulk of the time gains, Moore indicated.
Kostecki subsequently flashed impressive pace in his own debut at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
Now his former teammate Will Brown, who Moore long engineered, is in line to make his Cup Series debut next month at Sonoma for RCR.
While Brown has moved on to Triple Eight, Moore has retained a working relationship with the Toowoomba product through GT World Challenge Australia, the duo combining on a Melbourne Performance Centre Audi.
At Supercars level, Moore has stayed on the #9 Camaro, guiding recruit Jack Le Brocq.
“If we hadn’t had the DNF with Jack at the Grand Prix, we’d be fourth in the drivers’ championship at the moment,” Moore said of Le Brocq.
“If you’d offered me that at the start of the year, I’d take that, that’s awesome, to be behind two Triple Eight cars and Chaz (Mostert). It’s probably not as bad as it appears from the outside.”
