At the end of June 2024, an option lapsed that would have otherwise tied rising star Kai Allen to Dick Johnson Racing. At the time, Allen was the defending Super2 champion, and he went on to take third in the series and also raced at Sandown and Bathurst for DJR as an endurance co-driver, alongside Will Davison. 

What was strange about this relationship, however, was what happened next. It was confirmed that Allen would move to join rival Ford team Grove Racing for 2025, and he did so with the vocal blessing of DJR management. 

“He’s heading to a great team where they know how to win and he will do a great job there,” DJR co-owner Ryan Story said in a statement. “[We are] very excited and happy for him.” 

At the time, it looked to be a case of the timing just not working out. What was less known – and certainly less public – was that when DJR released Allen, team management was working hard on securing not only 2023 Supercars champion Brodie Kostecki, but also the engineering corps he’d worked with at Erebus Motorsport and Bathurst 1000 winning co-driver, Todd Hazelwood.

It was quite understandable that, with such a big change incoming, DJR management would prioritise stability on the other side of the garage, in the shape of Davison. After all, since joining the team in 2021, the third-generation driver has never finished the championship outside the top 10.

So it was that 19-year-old Allen started his season alongside Matt Payne who, at 22, gave Grove a driver lineup that had a combined age that was, in the words of one crusty pitlane observer, “younger than some of Fernando Alonso’s racesuits.”

But while Broc Feeney was toying with the opposition to sweep the three Hidden Valley races, Allen was the man planting a flag of his own in the Darwin soil.

His third place in one of Saturday’s sprint races was impressive enough but, on Sunday, the way he handled the multiple challenges of qualifying, a single-car top 10 shoot out and then managed his car’s pace and tyres to pick off second place – a week before his 20th birthday – provoked understandable acclaim from most in the pitlane.

Better yet, the driver he passed for second in the closing laps was team-mate Payne, who joined Allen and Feeney (who, it is sometimes easy to forget, is just 22) in forming the youngest podium in the history of Supercars/Touring Cars down under.

All this means that Allen has vaulted himself to 12th in the drivers’ championship, just one spot behind another rising star, Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Ryan Wood. With Payne closing in on second place after his fourth 200 point-plus round in succession, it could well be that Grove could lock both its drivers into Supercars’ new-for-2025 finals system, which takes effect after the Bathurst 1000 in October.

One of the drivers who will be pushing to close the distance to Allen and earn a place among the top 10 is Davison. The veteran left Darwin 17th in the points, 113 behind Allen, and he and DJR would be aware that one more bad round could end his finals ambitions. 

Team management recently confirmed that Davison has a contract in place for 2026, in response to the questions that inevitably come about a 42-year-old racing driver running in the mid-field.

It looks unlikely there will be any such queries directed at Grove – potentially for a decade. 

A year on from those kind parting words from DJR, it could well be that with Allen, the Melbourne team have pulled off its second driver coup of the last three years.