This week we look back to the 2008/09 Toyota Racing Series. Drivers included eventual Series winner Mitch Cunningham, Sam MacNeill (second), Earl Bamber, William Buller and future F1 driver Will Stevens who eventually drove for both Maruissa F1 and Caterham F1, Ken Smith, Daniel Gaunt, Andrew Waite Andy Knight and NZV8 driver John McIntyre. Young Australian driver Scott Pye competed in all six rounds finishing third overall. Here’s Mark Baker’s race preview for the third round at Teretonga Park in Invercargill after Pye had crashed heavily in testing leading up to the race weekend……
Top Gun sets up title fight at Teretonga
His crew are calling him the “fighter pilot”, he races with a “Top Gun” decal on his helmet visor, and talented young Australian Scott Pye is taking his challenge for the Toyota Racing Series to the front row of the grid.
Just two days after wrecking his car in a high speed crash at Teretonga race circuit near Invercargill, Scott Pye has bounced back to take a share of pole position for the three TRS races this weekend.
It’s game on for Pye and Auckland racer Mitch Cunningham at Teretonga as their domination of qualifying sets up a trans-Tasman battle for the Toyota Racing Series lead.
Driving his Complispace/Visa transport Logistics TT104 ZZ race car, Pye took pole for the first race with a 55.197 sec lap. Series leader Mitch Cunningham answered Pye’s challenge and holds pole for the second race tomorrow morning with Pye alongside. The pair line up in the same positions for the feature race tomorrow afternoon.
Cunningham set his pole time on the final lap of the second session, the Auckland driver putting in a 54.825 second lap of the 2.62 km circuit to topple Pye from the top of the time sheets.
Just .218 sec covers the top six in the first session; .300 sec in the second session; the whole field is within one second.
Cunningham’s time was only .214 outside the race lap record set last year by Earl Bamber. Michael Burdett’s crew held him in pit lane at the start of the first session, changing onto new tyres in a bid to out-fox his rivals; the strategy delivered third fastest in that first session but saw Burdett slip to seventh fastest in the next.
Pole for race one was a perfect recovery for Pye from the massive test session crash on Thursday that forced his crew into a frantic repair and replacement session late into the night. Entering turn Two at Teretonga, Pye said he locked a front wheel and the car left the track as he attempted to regain control.
“The nose dug in and I was airborne, next time I touched the ground was when the car hit the tyre wall”. Deceleration figures from the crash showed he had endured 4.2g fore-aft and 4.8g sideways deceleration. “So my neck’s a bit sore but the car absorbed most of the energy, the central tub really did what it was supposed to do. The Toyotas are really well designed – I don’t think I’d have walked away from the same crash in another type of single-seater.”
Fastest times across both qualifying sessions give the drivers their grid positions for the feature race. With Pye and Cunningham sharing pole positions and front row starts in all three races the championship points lead battle will be fought out at the sharp end of each race.
The first race of the weekend for the TRS Championship cars starts at 6.13 pm this evening in the only “twilight” race meeting of the Tier One summer series.
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