Mitch and Shane Croke embrace following the Bathurst 1000. Image: Supplied
Team 18 team manager Mitch posted a video of the powerful moment to social media on Tuesday with the caption “agony and ecstasy”.
Shane, a sub-assembly staffer and pit crew member for Dick Johnson Racing, had forgone pit wall celebrations to console his brother as soon as the chequered flag fell.
That was of course in the immediate aftermath of Team 18’s Anton De Pasquale-driven Camaro running out of fuel on the final lap, allowing Brodie Kostecki through to score victory for DJR.
Mitch and Shane are both Supercars paddock veterans, while another of the four Croke brothers, Ben, also enjoyed a long stint in the sport that included leading DJR.
“It was a bit emotional,” Mitch Croke told Speedcafe of the scenes post-race.
“There’s usually a bit of rivalry and banter between us, but we are very close. Motorsport is part of what bonds our family together.
“He came straight over and was kind of apologetic. I said to him that’s the way it goes, you should be very proud.
“I’d felt like we were on course for second until they had their pit stop drama, and then as history shows it played out the other way.
“It was theirs and then it was taken away. They say Bathurst chooses its winner and in the end it chose them back.”
Team 18 issued a statement on Tuesday declaring its fuel shortage was the result of “an issue within the team’s fuel strategy software”.
It also confirmed no staff would be sacked as a result of the blunder. The team is instead working through the fallout of its major faux pas together.
Crew members travelled from Bathurst back to Melbourne via road as scheduled on Monday, before regrouping at its Mount Waverley base at 7:30am the following morning.
“We had a lot of time to reflect, and there were a lot of tears and a lot of emotion, and also a lot of silence on those car trips,” Croke said.
“We had a full get-together on Tuesday morning straight away before we even unloaded the trucks and went through everything.
“The engineering group had already got to the root cause and had a lot of the answers, and we just sat down with everyone as a group and talked it all through.”
Team 18 reveals Bathurst 1000 fuel fault, no staff sacked
Croke said it was important the team took pride from how it had executed the weekend prior to the fateful pit stop in which a miscalculation resulted in the car being under-fuelled.
“It still stings, but there’s a lot to be proud of from the weekend. That’s been the message this week, that we were in a position to win it,” he said.
“Yes, we didn’t win it, but two years ago we were never in contention for anything of that sort of level.
“So the team in the last two years has grown massively and it was important to remind everyone that we should take a lot of pride out of a lot of things.
“We performed pretty much flawlessly all week, our pit stops, everything throughout that day, were some of the best in pit lane, if not the best. Especially our brake changes and things like that.
“Whilst it might be the biggest race of the year and it’ll hurt for a long time, there’s a lot more positives than negatives to take out of it, that’s for sure.”
The team has little time to dwell on its heartache with preparations for next week’s Gold Coast 500 already in full swing.