New Zealand race fans love to reminisce about the years when we had a ‘Trio at the top’. For decades, it’s been “ahhh, Chris Amon, Denny and Bruce, them were the days”. Almost immediately, any such conversation has turned to why we couldn’t manage to get our drivers into similar opportunities.
There are as many answers as there are people asking. The tyranny of distance, the risible performance of our economy and the almost complete absence of companies of critical mass that market into Europe and the UK, or America, or Asia. The lack of kindly billionaires who love motorsport. Even our national obsession with ballsports and our excellence at the highest levels of rugby. All these and more are factors.
But there is one initiative – undoubtedly familiar to all who love and follow motorsport – that can make a difference and has begun to do so. Toyota Racing Series.
Watching the Canadian Grand Prix this week has an exercise in blended excitement and frustration, with a layer of irony some will understand.
Brendon Hartley (pictured above at the 2005 Toyota Racing Series) has his best starting grid position ever, and crashes out of the race in a couple of corners, squeezed out by Lance Stroll. Bad news for Stroll, whose F1 performance with Williams has been less than stellar. Possibly disastrous for Hartley if the rumours about his security at the team are even half true.
Stroll and Hartley share a particular developmental phase – they have both raced in New Zealand’s Toyota Racing Series. Brendon won the very first TRS race ever held; Lance came here and won the title in his first season in 2015.
Not to cast undue shade on the Canadian, but his title was anything but an emphatic blitz of the five rounds – he won the first and last races of the 15 and was simply consistent for the rest of the series. Many have mentioned Dad Lawrence’s 2018 estimated worth ($2.7bn*) and his backing of leading Italian race stable Prema PowerTeam. Lance was run by Prema through Formula 4 and the team retained a watching brief when the 16 year old came south to New Zealand. He was under the wing of the Ferrari Driver Academy from the age of ten. He hasn’t had to fight for a lot of what has come his way.
Brendon’s dad by contrast is a heck of a racer, builds a mean race engine and is his number one fan. Deep pockets? Hardly. Brendon is where he is strictly on the strength of his talent on and off the track.
So how do Kiwi drivers like Brendon – long on talent but short of funds – make themselves known in Europe, Asia or the USA? Up until 2005, and with a couple of notable exceptions, they didn’t. With ability and ambition, one or two Kiwis slipped through to international careers – most notably Scott Dixon, who had a group of motorsport-mad businessmen form a syndicate to bankroll him at the critical time.
The difference, from 2005 onward, was the arrival of the Toyota Racing Series. Few who follow motorsport will be unaware of the impact this unique series has had. It was born with the single-minded aim of giving Kiwi drivers the single-seater skills they needed to perform on the world stage, and has continued through a first decade and a vehicle evolution to do just that. In the early days the grids were predominantly Kiwis, with a few internationals sprinkled through the entry list.
The series started to make waves, though, when it changed things up, tightened the number of race weekends to five and went out to target European, Asian, American and British drivers. The internationals responded with enthusiasm: five weeks, fifteen races, up to 2000 km in modern composite wings and slicks cars? Competing on new tracks against the drivers you’ll bump into next year or the year after? “Yes please!”
TRS has delivered a fair few talents into premier categories – Russian Daniil Kvyatt reached F1 in 2014 on the back of a strong run here in Red Bull colours and under the tutelage of Guy Griffiths and Garry Orton at Victory Motor Racing. Brendon’s trip to F1 was longer and more convoluted and it’s harder to see the tipping point that delivered him – without major financial backing and at the statistically unlikely age of 28 – into a full F1 season. Like Daniil though, he’s had an extensive association with Red Bull/STR.
Another who came and won TRS on his rookie year is Brit Lando Norris. Competing with Mark Pilcher and Jonathan Moury’s M2 Competition equipe, he won six races, including the New Zealand Grand Prix, on his way to the local title in 2016.
Watching him from the press room his gift was apparent – he was unlike any of the other 19 drivers, just seemed at one with the car. Smooth, intuitive, possessed of an uncanny ability to just guide the car through chicanes that others seemed determined to pummel into submission with their suspension arms and barge boards. Behind the wheel, this kid was butter. He was special.
Like Lance, Lando went on to win the European Formula Three Championship the following year. Like Lance, he races for a team that casts a long shadow in the ‘junior’ categories: Carlin Racing.
Lando, it has been suggested, might look at jumping into Brendon’s Toro Rosso seat. My response would be “he’d be mad to do that”. Nurtured and supported now by a very capable McLaren team, Lando is on the right track to F1. He’s leading the F2 championship this year and is McLaren’s nominated junior/reserve driver with the prospect of a call-up if either McLaren F1 driver should trip over or fall ill.
He has every reason to expect that he will in any case accede to an F1 drive in short order. On the basis of his superb performance here when he won our own Toyota Racing Series at his first attempt, this diminutive Brit is the real deal. Why he would throw all that away for a chance to sit in STR’s less than consistent, less than reliable race car is incomprehensible.
* Forbes magazine’s billionaire list. Also: “Lawrence Stroll made his fortune by backing clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger and later buying a majority stake in fashion house Michael Kors, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange last year and now has “the best momentum” in all of retail, according to the analysts at Nomura Securities.
A multi-millionaire for years, he has now vaulted into the billionaires club with a fortune estimated at $1.8-billion. Silas Chou, Mr. Stroll’s Hong Kong-based business partner who helped him take Michael Kors public, also made the list.”
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