Allen brought full circle after DJR test
Kai Allen will come full circle with Dick Johnson Racing in October, 18 months after he completed a driver evaluation day with the team.
Allen's name will rapidly become a regular in Supercars circles, with the teen confirmed to race at Mount Panorama with Simona De Silvestro.
De Silvestro and Allen will share a DJR-run, Shell V-Power-backed #98 Gen3 Ford Mustang at the Repco Bathurst 1000.
The Mount Gambier teenager was aged just 16 when he lapped a Gen2 Shell V-Power Ford at Queensland Raceway last May.
Allen shared the track with fellow youngsters Thomas Sargent and Jett Johnson, and set himself on a pathway to the main game.
The 2022 season ended in a heartbreaking Super3 defeat in the final race due to a crash in Adelaide.
However, Eggleston Motorsport had already signed Allen on for a Super2 campaign in 2023, and he is second in the points after three rounds.
Allen raced with a broken collarbone on debut in March
It’s been a whirlwind year for Allen, who has won his first Super2 race and round, and tested a Radical at Silverstone.
Allen’s Super2 debut came with the extra baggage of a broken collarbone sustained in a mountain bike accident.
However, he shrugged it off to quickly emerge as a title contender, although a Bathurst debut brings Allen in line with memories of watching the Great Race with his father.
“I raced at Bathurst last year in a Super3 car, so it’s going to be exciting to race in the main game with all the big boys,” Allen said.
“I watched it on the couch with dad ever since I can remember, since I was a little kid.
“Being able to get in there and get amongst it is going to be unreal.
“That first lap and the race start, it’s all going to be unreal with all the hype, going across the Mountain for the first time.
“It’s going to be so cool, I can’t wait.”
Allen could quickly prove one of the hottest properties in Australian motorsport, given DJR — one of the biggest teams in the sport — has already signed him up for a Bathurst debut.
It could lay proof to the team’s ambition of giving young guns a chance to bed themselves in with a big team environment, a point reiterated by former DJR boss Dr Ryan Story last year.
"It will give us a good opportunity to evaluate them and a good opportunity for them to interact in a professional way with the engineers and see how a professional team operates,” Story said at the time.
"That’s an important part of anyone’s progression as they come up through the ranks, is having opportunities such as the one that we’re offering today for these three young kids.
"They need those opportunities to be able to get to that next step and to be able to continue their development."
Allen will resume his Super2 campaign at the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 in September.
