Wins, redemption and last chance saloon: What’s at stake for Supercars’ biggest driver moves

The driver market is always a delicate game.

Motorsport is all about timing, and that’s true off the track as well as on it. Success depends on having a fast car, and getting that fast car depends on being in the right place at the right time — or simply not being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Three experienced drivers will be hoping they’ve signed the right contracts for 2025.

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None among them is bigger than 2023 champion Brodie Kostecki, who’s rolled the dice on leaving Erebus to try to revive the struggling Dick Johnson Racing.

Anton de Pasquale ended up as collateral in Kostecki’s move, with the Melburnian throwing in his lot with the aspirational Team 18 to keep up his career momentum.

Richie Stanaway was dropped by Grove last year, less than a season into his comeback, but has found refuge with the up-and-coming PremiAir team.

Right place, right time? Or will this trio of switching drivers find their timing to be lacking?

BRODIE KOSTECKI’S BIGGEST CHALLENGE YET

It was inevitable Brodie Kostecki would be suiting up in new colours this year from the moment he ended up sidelined from his Erebus car at the start of the 2024 season.

The 2023 champion was the key piece of this year’s driver market puzzle, using his considerable leverage as the sport’s highest profile free agent to land a plum drive at storied Supercars grandee Dick Johnson Racing.

It’s the beginning of a new chapter for the 27-year-old, but this move is about far more than the former Erebus star leaving home to forge his own path.

Kostecki brings more than his title-winning pedigree to DJR. He’s been drafted in to resuscitate the fallen Ford giant and return it to the front of the field.

He’s been open about the fact that DJR has chased him to help turn the ship around — about the fact big results are the expectation. As much as new teammate Will Davison is the senior driver, Kostecki has been recruited as a leader to inject fresh ideas and energy into the stalled Queensland outfit.

While it’s still to be seen whether the soon to be former Ford homologation team has understood the Mustang well enough this year to roll out a competitive machine, Kostecki will be afforded little time to acclimatise to his new surroundings.

“We’re not going to accept anything else other than winning races and getting one-two finishes,” he said, per the West Australian.

“We’ve put in a lot of work in the off-season and there probably will be a (few) growing pains here and there, but I expect the cars to be right up the front straight away.

“I want to try to add to (the championships) and put my stamp on there.”

He’s maximised his chances of hitting the ground running by bringing with him former Erebus engineers George Commins and Tom Moore. His Bathurst-winning co-driver, Todd Hazelwood, is also set to join him later in the campaign.

And though this will be his first Mustang in Supercars, his chassis will be built by Erebus, potentially giving him a crucial one percenter in his transition from red to blue.

He’s also arrived in sizzling form.

It took him just three weekends following his two-round hiatus last year to find himself back on the front row of the grid and then on the podium in Darwin, and by the endurance season he’d really started to fire on all cylinders. He was in strong form when he suffered a technical retirement at the Sandown 500, but he backed up by blitzing the Bathurst 1000 from pole.

A dominant victory on the Gold Coast at the following round confirmed Kostecki lacked nothing for his disrupted season — though by then DJR had already snapped him up.

He has the pedigree, the form and as many tools as he can wield to make this switch a success.

But sometimes getting all these things to work together are easier said than done.

ANTON DE PASQUALE WITH A POINT TO PROVE

The inevitable knock-on effect of Kostecki’s move was that Anton de Pasquale would have to find a new home for 2025.

Team 18 came calling, though the switch was somewhat messy, with the 29-year-old pinching the drive from veteran Mark Winterbottom, who had thought he had the seat nailed down and was subsequently steered into retirement.

It’s been packaged as a clear case of young usurping old, but De Pasquale still has plenty to prove.

De Pasquale burst onto the Supercars scene in 2018 after a promising junior career abroad was curtailed by funding. Erebus plucked him from a Super2 campaign featuring multiple wins and sat him alongside David Reynolds — with whom he’s reunited this year — for a sudden full-time promotion.

A stunning third in his first Bathurst 1000 shootout confirmed his speed, and by the end of his three-year stint with the team he’d overhauled the far more experienced Reynolds in the title standings and had claimed his maiden win on the way.

Dick Johnson Racing, looking for a post-Penske refresh, snapped him up.

But the 29-year-old’s stint with Stapylton was inconclusive.

Of course he had the misfortune to arrive at the team at the beginning of a slow descent from the top of the sport to the morass of the midfield. DJR hasn’t been at its best during his tenure.

But nor did he make a definitive impression with his chance.

He beat teammate Davison 8-3 for wins, but five of them came in quick succession at Sydney Motorsport Park in a quirk of the 2021 pandemic-affected schedule.

De Pasquale only just edged Davison 26-23 for podiums — including those Sydney wins — but over their four years he was beaten 8560-8239 on points, and they shared top status on the title table two times each.

The young gun’s highs were higher, but consistency was elusive. With Davison a bankable performer even during the team’s difficulties, the writing was on the wall for De Pasquale once it became clear Kostecki was inevitable.

At Team 18 he’ll be up against a Reynolds who was finding his groove in his first campaign with the team — and who finished one place and 132 points ahead of him in last year’s standings.

Reynolds had the measure of 2015 champion and Team 18 incumbent Winterbottom all last year, qualifying 3.29 places and 0.171 seconds ahead of him on average. They were more closely matched in race trim, when just 0.33 place separated them at the flag, though Reynolds had a greater share of luckless low finishes that reduced that margin.

The veteran will be no easybeat, in other words, and with Team 18 teasing podium-getting form after its breakout 2023 victory, De Pasquale will have to rise to the challenge of this new career chapter.

RICHIE STANAWAY’S LAST CHANCE SALOON

Richie Stanaway briefly found himself without a job less than a year into his comeback season at the messy height of last year’s driver market.

The Kiwi had done the hard yards to revitalise his stalled career, travelling via a Bathurst wildcard with Greg Murphy and a Great Race victory with Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight to get the nod at Grove.

But the fast-moving market saw Grove have a shot at promising junior Kai Allen, with Stanaway the collateral damage.

It was rough on the 33-year-old, even if there was a prima facie case based on raw statistics.

On average last season he was qualifying 0.274 seconds slower and 3.52 places behind compatriot Matt Payne, who has long been tipped as a future Supercars star.

His race performances were little better, seeing him take the flag 3.4 places behind the sister car, resulting in a considerable 572-point difference at the end of the season, 2019-1447.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story.

While he was outqualified 6-17, five of his six single-lap successes came at the final five weekends of the season.

He also beat Payne in four of the last five races both of them finished.

Here was a driver clearly acclimatising to the sport, though by then it was too late to save his seat at Grove.

Fortunately PremiAir saw the chance to rescue his career, handing him the seat vacated by Tim Slade.

It’s as soft a landing as he could have hoped for. Not only is PremiAir a team on the up, but he’s back in a Triple Eight built Camaro, the model of car he took to a Sandown podium and Bathurst victory in 2023.

New teammate James Golding will be a familiar face, the two having been teammates at Garry Rogers Motorsport in 2019, though the incumbent is in strong form, having comfortably dispatched Slade and having taken PremiAir to its maiden podium at the Sandown 500.

The 2019 season also wasn’t a particularly happy one for Stanaway, with issues on and off the track conspiring to force him out of the sport and into what he then called an early retirement.

He got a lifeline thanks to a Peter Adderton-backed Erebus wildcard at the 2022 Bathurst 1000, and though he gave a strong account of himself, it was too late in the year to insert himself into the driver market.

A second lifeline popped up the following year in the form of a co-drive with Van Gisbergen, with which he returned those strong endurance results and leapt into the Grove drive.

Now PremiAir has offered him a rare third chance at redemption.

Stanaway clearly has the speed and ability to succeed in Supercars, but if he can’t make it work at PremiAir, he won’t get another chance. It’s all on the line in 2025.