Tom Gray says Brodie Kostecki has become the kind of teammate he needs in his first main-game season, with the championship contender pushing him to settle into the category faster as practice for the Tasmania Super440 begins on Friday.
Gray, 19, won the Super2 Series with Tickford Racing in 2025 to earn his promotion, and he said Kostecki was among the people who encouraged DJR to sign him. The pair now share a garage at a time when Kostecki sits second in the standings with five race wins, making him one of the clearest reference points for a rookie still finding his way.
“There’s so much you can absorb from him,” Gray said of running alongside Kostecki. “He’s won Bathurst, he’s won a championship, he’s won everything you want to win entering this category.”
Gray has already shown flashes of what he can do. He scored his first two top-10 finishes of the season at Christchurch before a lap one Sunday crash ended that weekend on a sour note. After four rounds, he sits 21st in the standings, a position that reflects the gap between speed in race trim and the consistency needed to move up the order.
That gap has mostly been built in qualifying. Gray said that has been his biggest struggle this season, even though he believes the race pace is there each round. He has spent time in simulation work trying to put together a cleaner one-lap effort so he can fight inside the top 10 more regularly.
Symmons Plains offers the next chance to do that on a circuit he knows well. The Tasmania Super440 is set for the 2.41km track, and Gray will arrive with a useful memory from last year, when he scored his first Super2 pole and race win at the venue.
He said Kostecki has been direct when something is off, and Gray does not sound bothered by that. “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,” 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.”
The relationship gives Gray a fast track through a steep learning curve, but it also underlines how far he still has to go before he can match Kostecki on outright results. For now, the rookie’s job is simpler: fix qualifying, convert the pace he says is already there, and keep the weekend alive long enough to show it. Friday’s practice session will be the first test.
