{"id":615935,"date":"2026-04-18T22:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615935\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T22:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T22:48:17","slug":"dick-johnson-racings-biggest-gain-in-christchurch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/615935\/","title":{"rendered":"Dick Johnson Racing\u2019s biggest gain in Christchurch"},"content":{"rendered":"

WHILE Brodie Kostecki<\/a> continues to be a force at the front of the field, Dick Johnson<\/a> Racing\u2019s biggest win in Christchurch has come on the other side of the garage.<\/p>\n

Supercars is typically brutal on rookies, and it has made no exception for 2025 Super2 champion Rylan Gray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After three rounds, the 19-year-old sat 20th in the standings with a points tally worth less than 35 percent of his championship-leading teammate\u2019s.<\/p>\n

But right from the outset at the ITM Christchurch Super440, Gray has looked a whole lot more comfortable, starting with being ninth-fastest in practice.<\/p>\n

Friday\u2019s race netted a 14th place finish, before he yesterday recorded the first and second top 10 results of his young main game career.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was quietly confident, to be honest, coming to a track that no one has been to,\u201d Gray told V8 Sleuth.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pic: Supplied\/Mark Horsburgh<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sort of worked in my favour in my younger career, I got used to going to tracks and learning and figuring them out pretty quick, so we ended up pretty good in practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a few little mistakes in qualifying, I should have been in the top 10 probably, but we had a really fast race car.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo top 10s is pretty cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gray\u2019s run to 10th in Race 12 yesterday afternoon was particularly impressive, capitalising on a strategy which armed him with fresher tyres to battle his way past the two most recent Supercars champions (Will Brown<\/a> and Chaz Mostert<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Although it wasn\u2019t without a slight scare.<\/p>\n

\u201cStraightaway I lost radio and could only hear beeps,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was driving around thinking it was getting a bit late to box and then I saw the sign and thought \u2018how many laps has that been out there for?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut luckily we got it on the first go. I think it was a good strategy to run long and come home strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

For someone who has made an immediate impression on categories such as Super2 and GT4, Gray admitted it was tough to be running towards the back of the pack prior to Christchurch.<\/p>\n

\u201cSydney, we slowly got there over the weekend. At GP (Albert Park) we had a lot of mechanical things in qualifying that hindered us but we always raced forward,\u201d Gray recalled.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaup\u014d was probably the toughest round for myself. We had no quali speed, had a little bit of race pace but nowhere near what I thought we should have, and then we\u2019ve come here and turned it around.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely been a big challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreviously I have been able to come into categories and perform quite well early, but it\u2019s Supercars, it\u2019s the best guys in the country so I didn\u2019t have any massive high hopes coming into this season that we were going to be top five, top 10 straight out of the box.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a big learning curve for myself, I think I have matured a lot. It\u2019s been really tough but we\u2019re slowly building now.\u201d<\/p>\n

DJR is now up to fourth in the teams\u2019 championship, and is closer to Grove Racing and Walkinshaw TWG ahead than Tickford Racing behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHILE Brodie Kostecki continues to be a force at the front of the field, Dick Johnson Racing\u2019s biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-615935","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-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615935","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=615935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}