Jason Richards

Promoted to lead driver, Richards won the next three NZ Touring Car Championships prior to joining Team Kiwi for the V8 Supercar series in Australia in 2001. Battling testing restrictions and the tyranny of distance, Richards finished an extremely creditable 19th in the 2002 V8 Supercar Series.

Richards moved to the new South Australian Team Dynamik in 2003, putting in some strong results, including a narrow failure to snatch victory in the Sandown 500 from Mark Skaife in the race's dying stages.

He then made the decision to move to the newly formed Tasman Motorsport outfit in 2004 and has developed into a driver who believes he is capable of standing on the top step of a V8 Supercar podium.

Coming back from a major rollover in the 2005 round at Queensland Raceway,[2] Richards quickly returned to stride and promptly placed the repaired Commodore into the top 10 in the following round at Oran Park Raceway.

His podium results in the Sandown and Bathurst endurance events in 2005 helped cement his place as a 'coming man' of the V8 Supercar category. In the 2005 Supercheap Auto 1000, Richards produced a strong performance and came very close to winning the race.

In the following year, Richards won the second of three races at the Winton Motor Raceway, hence gaining his first (and only) V8 Supercars race victory. He finished the season in 18th position.

At the 2007 Bathurst 1000 Richards and Murphy were the best placed Holden team, finishing fourth overall. Surfers Paradise was his best round in 2007 where he finished third overall, and finished 14th in the Championship, with 235 points 15 points behind teammate Greg Murphy.

Richards joined Brad Jones Racing VE Commodore in 2009, driving the #8 car. (who ran a new race number for the team in V8 Supercars but was the racing number of team co-principal Brad Jones during the team's years racing in AUSCAR and NASCAR at the Calder Park Thunderdome) Richards secured his first V8 Supercar pole position at Hidden Valley Raceway in 2009. Richards finished third at the 2010 L&H 500 with Andrew Jones.[3]

Year	Team	Car	Co-driver	Position	Laps
1997*	CPW Motorsport	BMW 318i	Brett Riley	DNF	125
1998*	International Motorsport	BMW 320i	Barrie Thomlinson	DNF	128
2000	Team Kiwi Racing	Holden VT Commodore	Angus Fogg	16th	157
2001	Team Kiwi Racing	Holden VT Commodore	Angus Fogg	16th	157
2002	Team Kiwi Racing	Holden VX Commodore	Simon Wills	11th	160
2003	Team Dynamik	Holden VY Commodore	Simon Wills	22nd	139
2004	Tasman Motorsport	Holden VY Commodore	Fabian Coulthard	20th	152
2005	Tasman Motorsport	Holden VZ Commodore	Jamie Whincup	2nd	161
2006	Tasman Motorsport	Holden VZ Commodore	Andrew Jones	DNF	151
2007	Tasman Motorsport	Holden VE Commodore	Greg Murphy	4th	161
2008	Tasman Motorsport	Holden VE Commodore	Greg Murphy	2nd	161
2009	Brad Jones Racing	Holden VE Commodore	Cameron McConville	2nd	161
2010	Brad Jones Racing	Holden VE Commodore	Andrew Jones	23rd	157

* Super Touring race

Since 2013, the driver who scores the most points across all races during the weekend of the New Zealand round of the V8 Supercars championship has received the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy. The trophy was introduced when the series returned to Pukekohe in 2013, replacing the Mark Porter Memorial Trophy presented at the Hamilton 400.

Jason Bright and Brad Jones Racing, Richards' last teammate and team respectively, were the first winners of the trophy.[6] In 2015 and 2017, Jamie Whincup, who was a teammate of Richards in 2005 at Tasman Motorsport and co-drove with him to a second-place finish at the 2005 Bathurst 1000, won the trophy.[7]