![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/t.cfjump.com\/92797\/a\/204801\")
<\/a><\/p>\nDick Johnson Racing has rallied around its rookie amid a brutal first season in Supercars.<\/p>\n
In every race that Kostecki has started this year, he\u2019s only been beaten by Gray once.<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s scorecard pales in comparison to Kostecki\u2019s with just one top 10 finish across 23 starts to sit a lowly 19th in the standings.<\/p>\n
Kostecki, meanwhile, has the most race wins of any driver this season with six. He has only finished outside the top 10 on three occasions.<\/p>\n
Gray hasn\u2019t been able to continue the trend of Super2 Series graduates who have found success almost immediately in Supercars.<\/p>\n
Kostecki famously finished second in just his fifth Supercars race with Erebus Motorsport in 2021 and scored three podiums in his debut season.<\/p>\n
Will Brown was a race winner in his rookie campaign in 2021, and the same was true for Broc Feeney in 2022 with Triple Eight and Matt Payne in 2023 with Grove Racing.<\/p>\n
Neither Ryan Wood nor Kai Allen were able to win in their rookie seasons, though Wood was a podium contender in 2024 and Allen was a five-time podium finisher in 2025 en route to the Adelaide Grand Final.<\/p>\n
There is still time in the season for Gray to tick those boxes, whether that be a top five or a podium or even a win.<\/p>\n
![\"Rylan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Supercars-Townsville-Sunday-210-copy.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rylan Gray on track during the Townsville 500. Image: InSyde Media<\/p>\n
Gray\u2019s struggles should, however, best be compared against his fellow Super2 graduates: Zach Bates, Jackson Walls and Jobe Stewart.<\/p>\n
Bates is the best of the quartet, sitting 17th in the drivers\u2019 championship for Matt Stone Racing and only marginally ahead of Gray in 19th.<\/p>\n
Walls is second-to-last in some of the grid\u2019s best equipment behind the wheel of a Triple Eight Ford Mustang.<\/p>\n
Stewart, meanwhile, is last in an Erebus Motorsport camp that could be best described as being in a rebuilding phase with the rookie and second-year full-timer Cooper Murray.<\/p>\n
Despite the doom and gloom on paper, Gray showed glimpses of speed at the Townsville 500 where he cracked the Top 10 Shootout on Saturday.<\/p>\n
On used tyres, he qualified 10th before a mechanical failure relegated him to 16th. Gray bookended that result with finishes of 17th and 15th on Friday and Sunday.<\/p>\n
Speaking at Reid Park, Kostecki came to Gray\u2019s defence when the 2023 champion was labelled a \u201cone-man band\u201d by Supercars driver-turned-presenter James Courtney.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously pretty tough. Rylan is still quite young and he still lacks a lot of experience,\u201d said Kostecki on the Fox Sports broadcast after his Sunday race win.<\/p>\n
\u201c[On Saturday] he did a great job getting into the Shootout and unfortunately broke a rollbar blade two laps into the race. He had a shocker in the race.<\/p>\n
\u201c[On Sunday] he made a little mistake in qualifying. He was only a tenth-and-a-half off me before the mistake.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s showing all the signs, he\u2019s just got to strap it all together and get the monkey off his back and he\u2019ll be away firing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll get there, he just needs a little bit of time.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a lot of support from the team, which is great. I\u2019ve been trying to help as much as I can.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cars have been really, really fast. Once he works it out, he\u2019ll be up the front with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Rylan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Supercars-Townsville-Sunday-041.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Rylan Gray on track during the Townsville 500.<\/p>\n
On Thursday in Townsville, DJR team manager Tom Moore addressed Gray\u2019s performance at the Darwin Triple Crown where he went up against Todd Hazelwood amid Kostecki\u2019s illness absence.<\/p>\n
Hazelwood out-qualified Gray and beat him in Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
The presiding theme in Gray\u2019s development is minimising mistakes in qualifying, according to Moore.<\/p>\n
\u201cRylan was top five and six for three of those first four (qualifying) runs, and we were really quite looking forward, going yep, this is a shoo-in for the shootout here and unfortunately he just made a mistake on that last run at Turn 1 to go through to the shootout,\u201d Moore explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cInternally, it didn\u2019t look like what it looked like on the outside. That\u2019s the benchmark that we\u2019re assessing him on. The assessment we\u2019re tracking is how his qualifying performance has been going. That\u2019s the hardest part of our category.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moore said Gray was well aware of the optics of being beaten by the ring-in Hazelwood, but tempered that by noting their relative experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cRylan was quite a bit quicker than Todd throughout most of those runs and just made a mistake unfortunately at the wrong time,\u201d said Moore.<\/p>\n
\u201cTodd was building himself up to it and was more consistent but with pace wasn\u2019t quite as fast as rylan across the session.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn paper it looked like he outperformed him in that regard \u2013 and Rylan certainly felt that, he got out and went \u2018This looks really bad for me\u2019, but there\u2019s no pressure from out point of view.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still very very happy with where he is. He\u2019s meeting those expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supercars continues its season with the Perth Super440 at Wanneroo Raceway on July 31-August 2.<\/p>\n
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![\"Kostecki](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/038-Gray-EV06-26-KB1_9287-copy.jpg\")