The Erebus chassis during its shakedown in May. Image: Richard Gresham
Brodie Kostecki heavily damaged the front-end of his Shell Ford in a head-on hit with the barriers at Turn 2 during Saturday morning qualifying.
The team was allowed to take the car offsite for repairs – performing work at DJR headquarters and the nearby Pace Innovations – before completing the rebuild overnight at the circuit.
While the repaired car contested the Sunday race, finishing 11th, DJR has deemed it’ll need more work before returning to the track.
“There’s some other remediation work that will need to take place with that chassis, so Brodie will slip into the spare car for Sandown and Adelaide,” DJR co-owner Ryan Story told Speedcafe.
Kostecki is being moved into the team’s other previously raced Erebus-built chassis, which teammate Will Davison campaigned from the Perth round through to The Bend.
It was sidelined ahead of the Bathurst 1000 following a request from Davison to switch back to the Pace-built chassis in which he’d started the season.
Story affirmed no issues were found with the car that Davison stepped out of and expects a smooth transition for Kostecki.
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The team co-owner also confirmed DJR’s purchase of a spare Erebus-built chassis from the Blanchard Racing Team.
BRT, which currently fields Pace chassis, had planned to move to the James White-built Erebus examples but has changed strategy amid a 2026 tie-up with Triple Eight.
“BRT bought an Erebus chassis and were in a position where they weren’t going to build it up,” Story explained.
“Given that’s the spec we’ve been racing, we hatched a deal. It’s good for them, good for us.”
The ex-BRT chassis is set to be repainted in DJR’s chassis colour before being built into a complete car.
While the BRT deal gives DJR one more White-built chassis, the Shell team remains in an interesting position given Erebus’ pledge to shut down its customer program.
DJR’s much-vaunted switch from Pace to Erebus chassis occurred ahead of 2025 as Kostecki and race engineers George Commins and Tom Moore switched between squads.
While the Gen3 chassis are of a control specification, Kostecki has spruiked the tolerances and attention to detail on the construction of the Erebus chassis as superior.
Davison’s Pace-built chassis underwent repairs post-Bathurst. Image: Supplied
However, Erebus boss Barry Ryan declared in June that the team regrets selling chassis to rival teams.
“That may well be the case, and we respect Barry and any business decisions they make,” Story said when asked of future chassis plans.
“If we’ve got three, we’re happy with that and we’ve got a good relationship with Pace Innovations. How we go forward from there, time will tell.”
Barry Ryan doubled down on his June comments about the chassis program in an interview with Speedcafe ahead of last month’s Bathurst 1000.
“It didn’t work for us. We’ve got chassis we want to build for ourselves next year and Jimmy [White] is a one-man band, we just don’t have time to build multiple chassis,” he said.
“We regret doing it, we should have never done it, but it’s a thing you’ve got to sometimes try. We’ll just get on with being the independent team we’ve always been.
“If [DJR] want more in the future they aren’t going to get them off us.”