Brodie Kostecki Steers Gray’s DJR Rise With Five Wins
brodie kostecki has become the benchmark inside DJR, and Gray says the lead driver has already taken him under his wing. The rookie sits 21st after four rounds, but he also has a teammate with five race wins and second place in the standings setting the standard every session.
Kostecki’s DJR standard
Gray said Kostecki’s feedback is direct when it needs to be. “He gives me a kick up the butt if I’m doing something wrong, which is actually really good in a teammate, he wants to see me do well,” he said. That comes from a driver Gray described as having won Bathurst, a championship and “everything you want to win entering this category.”
Gray did not land at DJR by accident. He was signed at Kostecki’s encouragement, and the pair have already built a working rhythm around data and video. “There’s so much you can absorb from him,” Gray said. “I want to get up there and then fight it with him, but I couldn’t ask for a better teammate to be honest. It’s good to have all his data and video to look over.”
Gray’s rough main-game start
The rookie’s first four rounds have not been clean. Gray called it “a pretty tough start to be honest, which I sort of expected coming into the main series,” and pointed to New Zealand’s Taupo as a poor opening before Christchurch brought a sharper response. There, he posted his first two top 10 finishes of the season before Sunday ended with a lap one crash.
His biggest problem has been one lap. Gray said qualifying has been his biggest struggle to date, even while race pace has held up. “We’ve had a lot of race pace the whole time through every single round, we just haven’t really put qualifying together,” he said. “We always move forward in the races, I’ve got that sorted now, we just need to qualify better.”
Symmons Plains pressure
That issue lands on a track where track position matters. Gray’s first Super2 pole and race win came at Symmons Plains last year, and he called Tassie “a good round for me last year… but obviously the level is a lot higher in main game.” Practice for the Tasmania Super440 starts on Friday, with the 2.41km bullring likely to put the spotlight straight back on qualifying.
For DJR, the immediate read is simple: Kostecki is already helping shape the rookie’s habits, and Gray is trying to turn that into results fast enough to climb from 21st. He has the race pace to stay in the fight; the next step is getting the lap time to put himself beside his teammate instead of chasing him from deeper in the field.
