Barry Ryan taken aback by wild Brodie Kostecki hot lap
Erebus CEO snapped up hot lap with Kostecki at charity event
Kostecki took Ryan for lap at Sandown on Friday
Brodie Kostecki made sure his former boss Barry Ryan got a fright when they reunited for a “special” hot lap at Sandown.
Erebus Motorsport CEO Ryan snapped up a hot lap alongside his former driver in a Shell V-Power Ford after a successful bid at a Motorsport Ministries charity dinner last month.
The hot lap came at Sandown Raceway on Friday, with Ryan — who oversaw Kostecki’s 2023 championship and 2024 Bathurst win with Erebus — jumping into the passenger seat.
Kostecki, who raced full-time with Erebus between 2021 and 2024, didn’t miss out.
“He was having a crack. He definitely wasn't doing an 80% lap, there was a lot of kerb everywhere,” Ryan told media, including Supercars.com, at Sandown.
“He was trying to break my back, I think.”
Having been around motorsport for decades, Ryan said the hot lap gave him a fresh appreciation for “how fast and the cars are and how talented the drivers are.”
It also brought the two together for a smile and a laugh, less than two years after Kostecki’s highly-publicised exit from Erebus, which saw Kostecki sit out the first two rounds of 2024.
“We just joked around for a lot of years, and all the bullshit you see in the media was a lot of bullshit,” Ryan said.
“There's no drama there. We have a bit of fun. We were texting last week, hanging shit on him about it. And yeah, it's no drama. We all get on with life.”
Supercars interim CEO and Chairman Barclay Nettlefold and Repco Chief Commercial Officer Wayne Bryant also took hot laps with Kostecki, after they also chalked up successful bids at the charity event.
For Ryan, one corner stood out on the lap — Sandown’s infamous Turn 6 sweeper.
When asked about the wild Turn 6, Ryan said: “That was good, really good. That's probably the biggest experience, through Turn 6. It’s pretty fast through there.
“You come up to it, you go, ‘Shit, we're going around this?"
