Brodie Kostecki drives through Team 18’s pit box. Image: Fox Sports
Croke and his pit crew were setting up to service Anton De Pasquale as Dick Johnson Racing completed Kostecki’s pit stop in the bay behind.
Rather than navigating around, Kostecki blasted through the Team 18 crew on exit – forcing Croke to dive out of the way.
The incident has been referred to the stewards with a penalty for an unsafe release expected to be forthcoming.
“I’ve been car controller for a lot of years now and I’ve been in pit lane 14 years, and that’s as close as I’ve come to getting hit,” Croke told Speedcafe.
“Luckily I’ve got pretty good reflexes and got out of the way. I hate to think what would have happened if I ended up on the bonnet.”
Croke affirmed there had been no agreement between teams for Kostecki to drive through their crew.
“Normally, we have a pretty good understanding,” he said.
“We’ve been around DJR all year in pit lane, and generally Tom [Moore], their car controller and myself have a pretty good understanding of letting us go through each other’s bay, mainly on entry. We’ve never really discussed anything on exit.
“We had a bit of a last-minute call to set up for car #18, so we had to set up, we couldn’t wait for them to complete their stop.
“Through that, Tom’s assumed that he’s kind of got my attention to some degree [with a hand signal], but I didn’t see what was going on in their stop.
“Helping set up our guys on the outside, I’ve turned around and then had to jump out of the way of Brodie coming through.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car drive through someone else’s bay on exit.
“The guys on the outside had cleared their gear to give Brodie a decent swing out rather than a normal swing out and we kind of weren’t really expecting them to drive through.”
Croke said the near-miss shone a spotlight on an issue that does not get enough limelight.
“I think not enough gets said about pit crew safety in pit lane, particularly with double-stacks and things like that,” he said.
“I take it seriously, and our guys take it seriously as well because it’s a very high-risk job that we probably don’t get enough credit for at times.”