Brodie Kostecki is fresh off winning his first Supercars Championship in Australia, but he has a different form of racing on the table in 2024.
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Kostecki made his NASCAR Cup Series debut this past season at the Indianapolis Road Course, with support from Richard Childress Racing.
Kostecki appears to be high on Childress' radar, as the owner traveled to Adelaide, Australia, to watch the driver win the Supercars championship this past weekend.
Congrats to @BrodieKostecki and Erebus Motorsports on clinching the 2023 V8 Supercars championship in Adelaide this weekend. Richard Childress and others from RCR traveled to Australia for the race. pic.twitter.com/zQa2l5Z06Q
— RCR (@RCRracing) November 26, 2023
According to motorsports.com's Charles Bradley, Childress spoke with Fox Sports about wanting to run several races with Kostecki. The road courses would be a major opportunity, but he also wants to get Kostecki on an oval as well.
"Hopefully we can race him two or three (times) on the road courses," Childress said. "But I want to run him on an oval; he's raced on them earlier in his career. The schedules have to coordinate; I've got a couple in mind that I'd like him to run — we're looking at Watkins Glen and Sonoma — because he'd do well there."
His Indianapolis Road Course start was pretty good for his first time in a Cup car, as he qualified 11th, although an incident forced him to the rear for the race after going to a backup car. He ended the race in 22nd but was certainly able to learn things. And according to Childress, having Kostecki in NASCAR has helped his other two drivers: Austin Dillon and Kyle Busch.
"It was a pretty neat deal to have him come over," Childress said. "Both drivers of ours are doing better (on road courses) because Brodie came over. There's such a high level of competition in Supercars; if our drivers came here, they'd get educated pretty quickly because these guys are so aggressive and you've got to be so good with these cars."
Kostecki was able to beat out three-time Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen — who is also making the big move to NASCAR — for the championship in Adelaide. So both have plenty to look forward to when they race against each other in the United States.
NASCAR is about to really get exciting with such powerful names coming from Australia. Van Gisbergen looks to be here for the long haul in NASCAR; could Childress be able to do the same thing with Kostecki?
Time will tell, but one thing is for sure: Childress has plenty of faith in the 26-year-old Australian driver.
