Brodie Kostecki moves into the famed number #17 Ford Mustang.<\/a><\/p>\nGray\u2019s off-season was not only spent familiarising himself with his new team, but also his new teammate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been here with the team for quite a while now, doing some training with Brodie and getting into it,\u201d Gray told Speedcafe.<\/p>\n
Elevating to the main game after winning the 2025 Dunlop Super2 Series title for Tickford Autosport, the culture shock of moving teams has not been lost on the young star.<\/p>\n
\u201cLearning everyone\u2019s names has been a bit challenging for me, but I\u2019m getting there now, and just spending time with the team has been the big thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe culture here at DJR is phenomenal, everyone\u2019s well prepared, well mannered, it\u2019s so different to what I\u2019m used to, but that\u2019s what I love about this team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Supercars presents a high standard of competition not yet experienced by Gray, but the rookie is not letting that be a deterrent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll go to Sydney and just do the best we can, and then we\u2019ll build results from there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s hard to be a rookie, come in and perform straight away, but I definitely think we have the tools necessary to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While only turning 20 years of age in 2026, Gray still brings to the table a wealth of success in a relatively short time, finishing seventh and first in the standings in a pair of Super2 seasons, taking round honours for the first time at Bathurst in 2024.<\/p>\n
Gray also combined with George Miedecke to finish second in two seasons of Monochrome GT4 Australia.<\/p>\n
To prepare for the move into the main game, throughout 2025 Gray notably sampled Gen3 machinery in a solo wildcard appearance at Hidden Valley Raceway, before combining with Super2 teammate Lochie Dalton in an enduro campaign, finishing a best of 13th in the Bathurst 1000.<\/p>\n
The Repco Supercars Championship season kicks off with the pre-season test session at Sydney Motorsport Park on Wednesday February 18th, before the Dunlop Sydney 500 opens the season that weekend, with free fan entry on Friday February 18th.<\/p>\n
Gray will have his first drive of a Shell V-Power Racing Mustang during a rookie test at Queensland Raceway on February 9, while the team takes to the circuit today to shake down Kostecki\u2019s new car.<\/p>\n
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/285241.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rylan Gray with Brodie Kostecki. Image: Supplied The young phenom joins DJR full-time in 2026, taking over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[16901,111,139,69,80222,213,217],"class_list":{"0":"post-265537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-dick-johnson-racing","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-rylan-gray","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-supercars"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Supercars](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Rylan-Gray-Brodie-Kostecki.jpg\")