As I write this, defending Virgin Australia Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin has just contested the third round of the 2019 series in Tasmania.
This coming weekend he will be back on the ‘mainland’ driving the #17 Shell V-Power Racing Ford Mustang at the fourth round at Phillip Island. Then the weekend after the 25-year-old will be back home…… behind the wheel of a kart contesting this year’s Porter Group-backed KartSport New Zealand National Sprint championship meeting in Hamilton.
You read that right.
This Easter, Scott McLaughlin, who finished second in the 2017 Virgin Australia Supercars championship, won the title in 2018 and who heads to next weekend’s round of this year’s Aussie title chase with a handsome lead in the 2019 series’ points standings, is returning home at Easter to race a kart at this year’s NZ championship meeting!
Sure, we’ve had car drivers returning to the country’s kart tracks for the odd event before. In fact I well remember the Nationals many a year ago now, again at Hamilton, where we had a separate promo race involving local hero Kayne Scott, inaugural Nissan Sentra GT Cup series winner Rhys McKay, the late, great Ashley Stichbury, plus a couple of other kart-turned car drivers, the win (I think), going to Stich.
This time it is entirely different, however. In fact, the more I think about it, the more plain, simple old excited I get. It’s not just me either. The guys I work with when I’m doing the publicity for KartSport New Zealand, long-time National Secretary and National Development and Administration Officer Robert Hutton, and National President Graeme Moore, are positively buzzing as well.
The equivalent, I would imagine, would be Lewis Hamilton – or before him, Jenson Button – turning up to do a round of the British Karting Championship. Or our own Scott Dixon (now there’s an idea) announcing he is going to run in the S1 stock moto class at the annual SKUSA SuperNationals meeting in Las Vegas later this year.
Yes, I know that guys like Nick Percat and Macauley Jones have suited up to contest rounds of the Aussie Kart Champs in recent years. But with all due respect to them neither is the reigning Supercars series title holder and current pace setter, with all the mana, expectation, and fan/media interest which that entails.
Yet, because Mclaughlin is so absolutely unaffected by his status as current ‘Main Man,’ or ‘Big Bwana’ of arguably one of, if not THE best national ‘tin-top’ series in the world, it must have seemed like the most natural think in the world to put his hand up to have a go at this year’s Nationals.
After-all having already signed on as Patron of both the KartSport Hamilton club and KartSport New Zealand and attending last year’s Giltrap Group-backed National Sprint meeting at Rotorua for the first time in that capacity, it didn’t take him long to get itchy feet.
As he told me when I was preparing the official press release; “It (being there) just brought it all back. The thrill, the excitement, even the butterflies in the stomach feeling I used to get when I was sitting on the dummy grid waiting to head out onto the track…and I was just there to watch!
“So when I found out that this year the Nationals were being held at my old home track at Hamilton, I was like, ‘I’ve got to actually be in a kart this time!’
And so he will, a Tony Kart provided by national importer and distributor, Maurice Frost, of New Plymouth-based Supreme Kart Supplies.
Though better known now as the importer and distributor of Tony Kart karts and Vortex kart engines, Frost first earned his stripes in the kart game as an engine builder and it was in that capacity he first got to know McLaughlin, whose first major win on four wheels came in the Cadet class at the North Island title meeting (way) back in 1992.
“That’s right,” Maurice told me when I was doing a quick ‘fact-check’ for the KartSport New Zealand press release. “We have had a relationship with Scott from way back when he won the NI in Cadets. We were building his engines then, so when he asked us about organising the gear we were only too happy to be involved.”
So, come Easter Friday, the reigning Virgin Australia Supercars champion will line up with 16 other entrants in the Steenson Plumbing-sponsored 125cc Rotax Max Heavy class at the track where he got his start in four-wheel competition all those years ago, the KartSport Hamilton club’s recently re-named Porter Group Park (opposite the main entrance to the city’s international airport.)
First up will be scrutineering, then drivers’ briefing, then – just like Supercars, really – a couple of practise sessions in the morning before qualifying in the afternoon.
With eight different classes and over 120 entries track time is going to be at a premium, particularly if it rains and some sessions are dry and others wet. And I’m not sure anyone has taken into account the amount of time it is going to take Scott to walk from his pit tent to the dummy grid each time his class is up, such will be the interest in his being there from fellow competitors and average, everyday racing fans prompted to make the trip to the ‘Tron because of his presence.
So, no pressure then?
“Not at all,” McLaughlin said when I asked him about his own ambitions for the weekend. “I’m primarily there to enjoy a great weekend of karting at a track I know and love with a great bunch of people. Part of my role as Patron of KartSport New Zealand is to inspire the next generation of kids coming up through the ranks, and I truly can’t think of a better way to do that than by racing a kart myself.
“As to how I go, I won’t really know until I see who else is there, but put it this way, I’m a competitive person and I haven’t entered just to make up the numbers.”
The official announcement of McLaughlin’s entry certainly sent a buzz of excitement rippling through the ranks of karters across the country, no more so than amongst the 7-16-year-olds Junior drivers who, as Graeme Moore says, ‘absolutely dote on the guy.’
“Scott is their hero, there’s no doubt about that. Until he arrived on the scene if you asked one of our Juniors what they wanted to do in life most would have said, ‘be a Formula 1 driver.’ Now if you asked them, they’ll say ‘drive a V8 Supercar’ and a lot of that would be down to Scott.
“He’s such a good role model, fast and fair on the track and always ready to engage with the fans, particularly our young karters, off it.”
McLaughlin indeed, is something special alright, something very special. And the best thing is that he is ours. Born in Christchurch, raised in Hamilton and a product of the New Zealand karting scene.
Something each and every one of us can be proud, very proud in fact, of!
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