By Wayne Webster
Date posted: 19 December 2025
Dick Johnson Racing (DJR), the Supercars team that bleeds blue and always will, forced Ford to find its incoming homologation partner Triple Eight because, well, they didn’t want it.
Despite rumours that Ford was looking for a new paramour in Supercars, according to DJR minority owner, non-executive director and former team principal, Dr Ryan Story, the team actually blindsided the factory by saying, at the end of 2024, “we’re outa here”.
In an exclusive interview with Auto Action (now available in Auto Action Premium) one which lasted for almost two hours because Ryan Story has few friends and just talks, talks and talks, he admitted that that taking on the homologation team responsibilities was probably not the best decision DJR had ever made.
It was a passion project that saw the team spend millions of dollars of its own money, divert engineering talent and watch as the team’s race results turned to, well, shit.
“One of the challenges for us has been, and this is probably going to lead into the next question, being a homologation team even when you’re winning is a pretty thankless task,” he admitted.
“And it costs an enormous amount of money. I’ll never forget Tim Edwards when he was CEO of Tickford laughing at me when we took the thing on saying, “You’re going to regret it. The best thing that’s ever happened to us is that we’re not doing it anymore.”
So, according to Dr Ryan, the decision to walk away from the HT obligations was made.
“At close to the end of 2024, we advised Ford that we (DJR) didn’t want to continue as the homologation team,” explains Dr Story.
“And the principal reason behind it was the fact that we’d spent certainly all of 2024 and a significant portion of 2023 intentionally shooting ourselves in the foot because we were putting Ford first.
“That felt it was our responsibility while all the other Ford teams were able to just focus on going racing. And as a result, we were absolutely smashed,” he adds with a sigh.
According to Story, the honour of being Ford’s HT was not only draining results, but also draining the bank account of the team.
The cost of being Ford’s HT was in the millions of dollars
“Millions that we could have spent elsewhere,” he admits.
And Ford just sat backed and did little more than cop the good publicity and accolades rather than throw in some dollars to drive the program.
“ Ford provided a sponsorship agreement. And when Ford came back into racing in a big way and supporting all of their teams through sponsorship, we were top of the pops as a consequence of being the homologation team. And we were extremely grateful for their support. But it was not commensurate to our spend. It was not commensurate to our investment,” explains Dr Story.
According to Story, ditching the HT role has already made a massive change within the team.It can now focus and put resources into areas where it can finally improve its on-track performance.
“It’s one of the reasons why we picked up Rylan Gray because we know we now have a structure where we can support a rookie,” he admits
“So, this frees up our resources, it frees up our people, it allows us to focus on ourselves and do what’s best for DJR and the Shell V-Power racing team.
“Handing back the HT duties is like taking the shackles off. Every time we finish behind another Ford we’ll know we didn’t do a good enough job.”
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