How Erebus is managing ‘really hard’ start
By Thomas Miles
Date posted: 20 June 2025
In 2025, Erebus Motorsport is experiencing a new “rebuild,” and despite arriving at Darwin last in the teams standings, it is “positive” a turnaround will come soon.
After BRT’s breakthrough Perth podium, the battling Ford team jumped the 2023 driver’s champions to push Erebus to the back of the pit lane.
It is the latest blow in a season where Erebus has taken a fresh start with rookie Cooper Murray and a brand new engineering line up.
They have shown flashes of speed, but things have not gone their way in the races with just one top 10 in the last eight starts.
However, Erebus CEO Barry Ryan is optimistic the tide will turn soon.
“Pretty positive and its big being Cooper’s first repeat round, having done the wildcard last year,” Ryan said.
“He has qualified really well and got involved in an incident, so he is really fired up to get a good result for himself and the team.
“Jack (Le Brocq) won here in 2023 and got a pole so there are some sources of positivity.
“The cars have been really strong all year, and we are getting there.
“We have had top fives in qualifying but have not delivered on race results.
“This is not where we want to be but we are still feeling positive on the car speed and drivers.”
Sitting 23rd in the standings with a best result of ninth, Murray is still finding his feet in his rookie season.
But as qualifying at Albert Park showed where he got as high as third, Ryan is liking the progress.
“He is going good and does not mind putting it on the line, especially in qualifying,” he said.
“But sometimes he oversteps the mark and needs to bring it back to 99.9% rather than 101%.
“Once he gets that top three qualifying like at the Grand Prix before he got taken out that is when we will see the real Cooper because he controls a race with good race pace and really looks after the tyres.
“Racing in the midpack is so tough this year, especially as a rookie being a target. You got to earn respect and also not put yourself in bad positions.
“We are confident he will be ready to win races by the end of the season, and if not next year.”
But with results lacking with a best result of sixth so far, Ryan is not denying the difficulties his team has endured so far since losing Brodie Kostecki.
“There’s no hiding behind it, the last 18 months have been really hard on our team,” admitted a frank Ryan at the Friday team owners press conference.
“Losing key people, it took us a long time to rebuild. Our last rebuild was 2021 with Brodie and Will, and no one believed really in that, and we won a championship two years later, and won Bathurst the year after.
“We’ve gone back to sort of where we were then, so it’s hard on the team, and to replace people like George (Commins) and Tom (Moore) and Brodie, is really hard and Brad Tremain is kicking goals in America, so that’s four key people out of the team, it’s really tough to replace that.
“It’s going to take time, you can’t hide behind that. I can only do so much, and the boys I’ve had there for six or seven years can only do so much.
“We bring fresh people in, we try and train them up, and unfortunately I’m still race engineering, and I say that because I shouldn’t be, I should be running the business.
“Until we can get the right person to do that role, which we’re trying to promote from within, we’re trying to find an engineer that we can just put in and we can be really successful.”
But Ryan knows Erebus has risen from similar positions in the past and still believes they can defend the Peter Brock Trophy.
“It’s tough, but we’ll get there again,” he said.
“We’re confident in our team, and we’ve got a great bunch of loyal staff there that want to stay on and want to see us get there again and win championships and win Bathurst’s.
“We’re still going to go to Bathurst trying to win this year, we’ll have the belief and we’ll have the drivers that can do it.”
Supercars Darwin Triple Crown (times AEST)
Practice 1: Fri 13.20
Practice 2: Fri 15.25
Qualifying R17: Sat 9.05
Qualifying R18: Sat 9.55
Race 17 (42 laps): Sat 12.15
Race 18 (42 laps): Sat 15.40
Qualifying R19: Sun 9.35
Top 10 Shootout: Sun 12.05
Race 19 (70 laps): Sun 15.10
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