{"id":234168,"date":"2025-10-23T04:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T04:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/234168\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T04:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T04:40:09","slug":"richie-stanaway-concedes-full-time-supercars-career-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/234168\/","title":{"rendered":"Richie Stanaway concedes full-time Supercars career over"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Shocked
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRichie Stanaway. Image: Supplied<\/p>\n

PremiAir on Monday confirmed Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser as its two drivers for 2026<\/a> in a move that had been mooted for some months.<\/p>\n

Stanaway, however, publicly declared earlier this month that he had a two-year deal with the team and was fully expecting to race on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s believed his deal to join the team this season included an option for 2026, which he was informed last week would not be taken up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a bit of a shock to me,\u201d Stanaway told Speedcafe of PremiAir\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been driving as good as I ever have been, so I had envisioned myself being on the grid next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely a bit of a surprise, but it is what it is, and I just want to thank everyone that\u2019s supported me over the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to put our heads down and try and finish up the year strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

PremiAir Racing confirms double driver change for 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Stanaway made clear he\u2019s keen to race on as a co-driver in 2026, joining a busy market that includes retiring full-timers James Courtney and Nick Percat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just looking for a co-drive, there\u2019s no options for me to stay full time, and the priority for me to move forward racing full-time was continuity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never had the luxury of starting a Supercar season in the same car with the same team, with similar people around me and I wasn\u2019t going to get that if I started looking elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for me I\u2019m in co-driver mode now, just to see what\u2019s out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stanaway sits 22nd in the championship ahead of this weekend\u2019s Gold Coast 500 amid a challenging season for the PremiAir squad.<\/p>\n

The PremiAir exit is the latest blow in Stanaway\u2019s snakes and ladders career, which included retiring to New Zealand at the end of 2019.<\/p>\n

Stanaway famously returned as a wildcard at Bathurst in 2022 and won the Great Race the following year as a co-driver at Triple Eight.<\/p>\n

\"Shane<\/p>\n

Shane van Gisbergen (left) with Richie Stanaway after winning the 2023 Bathurst 1000 with Triple Eight Race Engineering. Image: Mark Horsburgh<\/p>\n

The Kiwi scored a full-time return at Grove in 2024 before scoring yet another lifeline at PremiAir ahead of this year.<\/p>\n

Asked if it feels like the end of his full-time chances, he said: \u201cThis time it does, yeah.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, being out of it the first time [at the end of 2019], I was still pretty young, and it made sense for me to come back and all that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s been four years of pretty hard work to get to this point where I was just looking for some consistency and some continuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s a pretty tall order for me to come back from this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact Stanaway has not succeeded as a full-time Supercars driver remains somewhat mystifying considering his credentials in junior open-wheel racing and as a co-driver.<\/p>\n

Pointing to his form in the closing rounds of 2024 at Grove Racing, Stanaway believes year-to-year continuity was all he needed to fulfill his potential.<\/p>\n

PremiAir signs Roland Dane as team principal<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year I was with a front-running team, and towards the end of the year, after years of not racing, started to get results,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on for a top five at Bathurst last year, qualified on the second row, came here [to the Gold Coast], qualified on provisional pole, and then backed it up with a P2 in the Shootout.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut by the time I started to build momentum there, I left and went to a different team. No one really knows what I would have been capable of with some consistency there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d known I wasn\u2019t going to be there for quite a long time last year, which is not something that I coped with very easily. It\u2019s not been ideal in either years, really.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richie Stanaway. Image: Supplied PremiAir on Monday confirmed Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser as its two drivers for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,27559,28218,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-234168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-premiair-racing","15":"tag-richie-stanaway","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234168","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=234168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}