![\"Kostecki](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Screenshot-2026-08-22-at-3.05.10-pm-copy.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrodie Kostecki drives through Team 18’s pit box. Image: Fox Sports <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrodie Kostecki drives through Team 18’s pit box. Image: Fox Sports <\/p>\n
Croke and his pit crew were setting up to service Anton De Pasquale as Dick Johnson Racing completed Kostecki\u2019s pit stop in the bay behind.<\/p>\n
Rather than navigating around, Kostecki blasted through the Team 18 crew on exit \u2013 forcing Croke to dive out of the way.<\/p>\n
The incident has been referred to the stewards with a penalty for an unsafe release expected to be forthcoming.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been car controller for a lot of years now and I\u2019ve been in pit lane 14 years, and that\u2019s as close as I\u2019ve come to getting hit,\u201d Croke told Speedcafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily I\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Croke affirmed there had been no agreement between teams for Kostecki to drive through their crew.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, we have a pretty good understanding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve 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\u2019s bay, mainly on entry. We\u2019ve never really discussed anything on exit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a bit of a last-minute call to set up for car #18, so we had to set up, we couldn\u2019t wait for them to complete their stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough that, Tom\u2019s assumed that he\u2019s kind of got my attention to some degree [with a hand signal], but I didn\u2019t see what was going on in their stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cHelping set up our guys on the outside, I\u2019ve turned around and then had to jump out of the way of Brodie coming through.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen a car drive through someone else\u2019s bay on exit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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\u2019t really expecting them to drive through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Croke said the near-miss shone a spotlight on an issue that does not get enough limelight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think not enough gets said about pit crew safety in pit lane, particularly with double-stacks and things like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take it seriously, and our guys take it seriously as well because it\u2019s a very high-risk job that we probably don\u2019t get enough credit for at times.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brodie Kostecki drives through Team 18’s pit box. Image: Fox Sports Croke and his pit crew were setting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864201,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2497,2498,43,432972,44,7499,42657,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-864200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-brodie-kostecki","tag-dick-johnson-racing","tag-headlines","tag-mitch-croke","tag-news","tag-slot4","tag-team-18","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}