Look back in history Sunday: Cassidy wins on debut in TR86 Champs (2014)

| Photographer Credit: Bruce Jenkins

This week we look back to 2014 and a younger Nick Cassidy makes his debut in the TR86 Champs at Teretonga Park in Invercargill

 

Cassidy wins on debut in Toyota Finance 86 Championship drive

Multiple Toyota Racing Series champion Nick Cassidy came to the Toyota Finance 86 Championship with one aim: to win races.

At the fourth round of the championship, on a track the TR86 cars have not raced before, he led an Auckland City Toyota team 1-2 finish, team-mate Tom Alexander just .125 of a second behind and vowing to score a win before the weekend is out.

Cassidy won from pole, with Alexander setting the fastest lap of the race and thus establishing a new race lap record for the category with a 1:07.452. Alexander’s second placing brings him to within 11 points of defending champion and current championship leader Jamie McNee, who has struggled for race-winning speed in these southern rounds.

Third home was Matt Gibson, whose team says he is revelling in the fast and flowing layout of Teretonga.

Jamie McNee retains a narrow 11 point lead to Tom Alexander, 611-600. Third is Ash Blewett on 575, while Matt Gibson’s third placing in this race brings him to within two points of fourth-placed Marcus Armstrong who is fourth on 482 points but is not contesting this round.

The cars of the Toyota Finance 86 Championship return to the track on Sunday for two further races: a ten lap race at 10:24 and then a 15-lap race at 2:09 pm.

Mark Baker has been working in automotive PR and communications for more than two decades. For much longer than that he has been a motorsport journalist, photographer and competitor, witness to most of the most exciting and significant motorsport trends and events of the mid-late 20th Century. His earliest memories of motorsport were trips to races at Ohakea in the early 1960s, and later of annual summer pilgrimages to watch Shellsport racers and Mini 7s at Bay Park and winter sorties into forests around Kawerau and Rotorua to see the likes of Russell Brookes, Ari Vatanen and Mike Marshall ply their trade in group 4 Escorts. Together with Murray Taylor and TV producer/director Dave Hedge he has been responsible for helping to build New Zealand’s unique Toyota Racing Series into a globally recognized event brand under category managers Barrie and Louise Thomlinson. Now working for a variety of automotive and mainstream commercial clients, Mark has a unique perspective on recent motor racing history and the future career paths of our best and brightest young racers.

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