Erebus Motorsport (formerly known as Erebus Racing) is an Australian motor racing team. The team competes in the Supercars Championship under the commercial title Coca-Cola Racing by Erebus with two Chevrolet Camaro ZL1s. The team's current drivers are Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki.
The team is owned by Betty Klimenko and is based in Melbourne. The team launched as a GT racing team in 2011 with the team joining Supercars in 2013 following the purchase of Stone Brothers Racing. The team is best known for winning the 2017 Bathurst 1000 with David Reynolds and Luke Youlden, and also won the 2013 Bathurst 12 Hour.
Racing history
GT
The team, then known as Erebus Racing, formed in 2011 when the team's first Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 car arrived from Europe. In the 2011 Australian GT Championship season, early season problems, coupled with the car not being ready until Round 3, limited driver Peter Hackett's championship run and he finished fourth. He did claim race wins at Phillip Island and at Mount Panorama along the way. Early 2012 provided the teams highlight to date, with second place in the 2012 Armor All Bathurst 12 Hour with V8 Supercar driver Tim Slade and European GT racers Jeroen Bleekemolen and Bret Curtis co-driving with Hackett.
The team expanded to a second car for the 2012 Australian GT Championship season with former V8 Utes and Nations Cup GT racer James Brock (the son of the late nine-time Bathurst 1000 winner Peter Brock) added as the second driver. After a crash in the opening round at the Clipsal 500 which put Hackett behind, he quickly got himself into the lead of the Championship. He led from round four through to the final round at Homebush, where he crashed in the opening race. He would go on to finish the championship in second place behind Klark Quinn.
Brock started the season strongly with a podium in Adelaide. A heavy crash at Phillip Island slid him down the order. After re-building the #62 from scratch, he suffered another crash at Sydney Motorsport Park, resulting in another write-off. For the remaining three events of the season, Brock was replaced by a group of European-based AMG Customer Sports factory drivers. Maro Engel. was the first, winning the round at Phillip Island, before FIA GT1 World Team Champion, Thomas Jäger joined the team. At the final round in Homebush, five times DTM Champion, Bernd Schneider joined the team and comprehensively dominated the weekend.
In February 2013, the team entered the Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour with its two Mercedes SLS AMG GT3s. #36 was piloted by Bernd Schneider, Thomas Jäger and Alex Roloff, while car #63 was piloted by regular driver Peter Hackett and V8 Supercars drivers Lee Holdsworth and Tim Slade. It was car #63 that would take pole position on the Saturday, with Lee Holdsworth behind the wheel, with a 2.06.22, but could only finish the race in 6th position, five laps behind the race winners after an incident late in the race whilst leading. This left the #36 machine to take the team's first Bathurst 12 Hour victory and added this race to the Dubai 24 Hour victory for Schneider and the AMG Customer Sports program. They ended the dramatic race with a lead well over a lap on the second and third placed cars. Roloff had the honour to take the chequered flag surviving the mixed conditions without radio contact to the team. The team struggled in that year's Australian GT season, with Jack Le Brocq only managing ninth in the points.
In 2014, the team finished third in the Bathurst 12 Hour, with Greg Crick, Will Davison and Jack Le Brocq behind the wheel. Their other entry, driven by Maro Engel, set pole position and in doing so won the first Allan Simonsen Pole Position Trophy. In the 2014 Australian GT Championship, Erebus won the title with Richard Muscat driving.
In the 2015 Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour, the team's leading entry was the Dean Canto, Le Brocq and Muscat SLS AMG, which finished in fifth position. In the 2016 Liqui Moly Bathurst 12 Hour, the team's leading entry was the Thomas Jäger, Nico Bastian and V8 Supercar driver David Reynolds SLS AMG, which finished in fifth position, A second SLS AMG was entered for Bernd Schneider, Maro Engel and Austin Cindric, however the car did not finish after Cindric hit the wall at the end of Mountain Straight.
After a period of scaling back of GT activities, the team prepared an entry at the 2019 Bathurst 12 Hour which included their Bathurst 1000 winning combination of David Reynolds and Luke Youlden alongside Yasser Shahin.