Making sense of a wild Supercars silly season

In quick time, the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship grid has taken shape — but it has also taken some shock pieces of news to get there.

It has been a silly season like no other, with young guns called up and veterans moving on.

At the top of town, Triple Eight Race Engineering, Grove Racing, Tickford Racing, Walkinshaw Andretti United and Team 18 will enter 2026 with unchanged line-ups.

Beyond that, there has been plenty of movement, with some contracts also pulled early.

As The Finals ups the ante in the competition stakes, it seems teams have been keen to get a move on, in a bid to get both drivers in the fight.

Friday’s news is perhaps the most pertinent example, with two-time Bathurst champion Will Davison parting ways with Dick Johnson Racing in favour of teenage rookie Rylan Gray.

All season, DJR had publicly backed Davison, who will make his 600th race start this month at Sandown. However, sitting 19th after 11 rounds, he is now leaving. In his place will be 18-year-old Gray, who is on track to arrive with a Super2 title in tow. That gives DJR an immediate win — a driver who has been winning.

Davison and fellow veterans James Courtney (Blanchard Racing Team), Nick Percat (Matt Stone Racing) and Richie Stanaway (PremiAir Racing) are now set to shift to co-driving duties.

45-year-old Courtney announced his retirement before the 2025 season, while 37-year-old Percat opted for retirement despite having two years remaining on his MSR contract. 43-year-old Davison has yet to comment beyond DJR’s Friday statement.

33-year-old Stanaway, meanwhile, went public before Bathurst that he had a two-year contract. After Bathurst, PremiAir Racing announced Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser in a double change, with James Golding already bound for BRT to replace Courtney. Then, last week, Stanaway parted aways with the team immediately, PremiAir then stating: "As previously outlined prior to the Gold Coast event, Richie was set to depart the team at the end of the 2025 season following the decision not to take up the 2026 option on his contract."

All told, there has been an enormous changing of the guard. There are set to be five rookies in 2026 (Gray, Ojeda, Jackson Walls, Jobe Stewart and Zach Bates), with four veterans departing (Courtney, Percat, Davison and Stanaway). 29-year-old Jaxon Evans and 27-year-old Bryce Fullwood are also moving on.

Should 2024 Super2 champion Bates land at MSR and Aaron Cameron continue at BRT, the average age of the Round 1 grid will be 27 years and 117 days. That blasts the previous marker — 29 years and 79 days, Eastern Creek 2008 — completely out of the water. The generational change is significant: in 2017, the average age was 31. Next year, it's four years younger.

That’s not to say teams aren’t keen on veterans anymore. New General Motors homologation squad Team 18 opted to take up its option on David Reynolds, who turned 40 earlier this year. Jack Le Brocq, who turns 34 next year, returns to MSR.

However — and this is almost bizarre to write — it means the second oldest driver on the grid in 2026 will be Chaz Mostert, who is three months older than Le Brocq. However, if Mostert's Gold Coast performance anything to go by, there's plenty of life in the old dog yet.

Mostert will be the oldest of a quietly aging and experienced — yet still relatively young — star cohort. Announced in June, Cam Waters (31) and Thomas Randle (29) signed on with Tickford Racing until 2027. Triple Eight have Broc Feeney (23) and Will Brown (27) locked away until they will be at least 27 and 31 years old.

The biggest threat to the whole field seems to be down at Penrite Racing, which has the youngest line-up on the grid. The scary part? Both Matt Payne (23) and Kai Allen (20) are in the 2025 Semi Final. For all the talk of the Groves’ on-track strategy prowess, they have nailed it with their drivers, and could form the team to beat in coming years.

Walls (SCT Motorsport/Triple Eight) and Stewart (Erebus Motorsport) have been promoted from their respective Super2 programs into plum main game drives. Gray and Bates arrive with Super2 results in tow. Ojeda is one of the most promising rising stars in Australia and is a factory Mercedes GT3 driver, and was too good for PremiAir to ignore. They’re all genuine talents.

This silly season began with Cameron Hill being confirmed at Brad Jones Racing, which will shift from GM to Toyota. Then, it kept getting sillier. Where some moves were expected, others came about over teams’ desires for change.

GM will be hoping for a lift next season, given they had only one 2026 driver (Anton De Pasquale) in this year's Finals. For what it's worth, De Pasquale was knocked out at the first chance of asking. The Ford, GM and Toyota rivalry will be strong, and will be centred on battles between experience and youth. As it stands, the Ford camp now leads the numbers game, while Toyota's competitiveness remains an unknown.

It sets up one of the most unpredictable seasons ever in 2026, which welcomes Toyota amid an expansion to 14 rounds. By Sydney next February, we may find out which team made the best moves.

2026 Supercars grid (as of Saturday November 1, 2025)

Note: SCT was with Brad Jones Racing in 2025, moves to Triple Eight in 2026