{"id":788901,"date":"2026-07-09T09:38:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788901\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T09:38:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:38:17","slug":"supercars-dick-johnson-racings-tom-moore-on-rylan-gray-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788901\/","title":{"rendered":"Supercars: Dick Johnson Racing’s Tom Moore on Rylan Gray progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

DICK Johnson Racing remains convinced recruit Rylan Gray<\/a> is ticking all the right boxes in his rookie Supercars season.<\/p>\n

DJR team manager Tom Moore spoke with conviction that the 19-year-old is progressing well \u2013 certainly far better than 21st in the championship might suggest.<\/p>\n

Making matters worse from an optics standpoint was that Gray was outqualified (13th versus 16th) and beaten over race distance (12th versus 17th) by supersub Todd Hazelwood<\/a> on the Sunday of the Darwin Triple Crown.<\/p>\n

That prompted some social media reaction along the lines of Hazelwood being touted as a better choice to be Brodie Kostecki<\/a>\u2019s teammate, but Moore today jumped to the #38 driver\u2019s defence armed with some valuable context.<\/p>\n

\u201cRylan was top five or six for three of those four (qualifying) runs and we were really like \u2018yep, this is a shoo-in for the Shootout here\u2019 and unfortunately he just made a mistake on that last run at Turn 1,\u201d Moore explained.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dick Johnson<\/a> and Rylan Gray with the Minions & Monsters Bag Buddy collectibles that have inspired the team\u2019s Townsville livery. Pic: Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cSo internally, it didn\u2019t look like what it looked like on the outside, and that\u2019s sort of the benchmark that we\u2019re tracking how his qualifying performance has been going, because we know that\u2019s the hardest part of our category.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a juxtaposition between the two: younger driver, older driver.<\/p>\n

\u201cRylan was quite a bit quicker than Todd throughout most of those runs and made a mistake unfortunately at the wrong time; Todd was sort of building himself up to it and more consistent with pace that wasn\u2019t quite as fast as Rylan for most of the session.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know on paper it looked like he sort of outperformed him in that regard, and Rylan certainly felt that \u2013 he got out and went \u2018wow, this looks really bad for me\u2019.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cBut there\u2019s no pressure from our point of view. We\u2019re still very happy with where he is. He\u2019s meeting all our expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

DJR fans are renowned for demanding top results, with Moore noting that Gray is regularly reassured of his high regard within the four walls at Stapylton.<\/p>\n

Shell V-Power Fords have won in two of the past three visits to Townsville, via Anton De Pasquale<\/a> in 2023 and Kostecki last year.<\/p>\n

This weekend\u2019s Supercars track action commences with Friday practice from 10:35am.<\/p>\n

The Undercut \u2013 How hot is too hot?<\/p>\n

The Undercut is back for another week, downloading a hot weekend in the Top End for Supercars!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DICK Johnson Racing remains convinced recruit Rylan Gray is ticking all the right boxes in his rookie Supercars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-788901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788901","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=788901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}