Taking pole position in just his third outing in Porsche Carrera Cup turned all eyes on New Zealand teenage sensation Tom Bewley at Queensland Raceway.
The current Porsche New Zealand scholarship driver delivered Earl Bamber Motorsport their first pole position since 2024 and highlighted Bewley’s rising status as a top six championship contender.
The 18-year-old from Havelock North was a stand-out in junior Porsche racing last year in Australia but the step-up to the top-line Carrera Cup series this year in just his fourth year of motor racing has been the story of the championship so far.
After a difficult start to the season at the Australian Grand Prix back in March, Bewley bounced back strongly when the series resumed in Darwin last month with two top-six finishes, but no-one expected he would snatch pole in such a highly-competitive field so early in his Carrera Cup career.
Bewley admits qualifying hasn’t been his strong point in the past but from the time the session went green at Queensland Raceway he was on the money.
“Every lap as I went across the line Ben [Jenkins], my engineer, would tell me where I was and where I needed to improve. Every time I went across the line it was either P1 to P3 so I knew we were in the mix and had a good chance to be up the front,” said Bewley.
“On the first tyre we had really good pace and put myself in a good spot in qualifying behind Harri Jones and Aaron Love, trying to learn a little bit off them and set a marker to go chase down. I came in after the first tyre run and saw I was about half-a-tenth [of a second] down so I knew I could find that little bit more and ended up finding half-a-second to go to the top.
“But sadly when I was trying to push for my second lap the car surged on fuel so didn’t get a second lap and that meant P7 for the second race.”
Grid positions for the two 45-minute races are set from each driver’s two fastest lap times in qualifying.
“I’m very happy to have put the lap together and give back the amount of hard work the team has put into me, especially over the last couple of years. Ben’s been my engineer from last year and this year and the amount of effort he’s put in has been pretty incredible and to see it pay off when I got to Carrera Cup and racing those top guys is pretty surreal.
“Round one this year [Melbourne F1 GP] we didn’t really get a qualifying session in, it was more of a practice session for me so really to hit off in Darwin and get a strong result P6 and then to come to Queensland and get P1 was incredible. I didn’t think I’d get that this soon into the season, he said.
But the high of getting his maiden pole in Carrera Cup soon turned into disaster when he failed to get the car off the start-line.
“I got a good warm-up lap in, a lot of looking behind me to see what Harri Jones was doing because he’s a bit of a master at that stuff so whatever he was doing I was trying to copy to get the most out of it.
“I did pretty much all the procedures right, put in neutral, waited but from where I was on the grid I couldn’t quite see the 5-second board from pole. I loaded the clutch up a bit too soon and too much. It burnt the clutch out and when it happens it just goes straight to the limiter and you have no drive so I had to pull off and out of the way so we didn’t get any more damage.”
Without turning a lap in the opening race Bewley’s team had no information to carry over to the second 45-minute race in which he started from seventh on the grid in a 28-car field.
“We had nothing going into race two so we threw a set-up at it that we thought would work but it didn’t quite work as the track condition had changed a lot. I still haven’t done enough of the 45-minute races to learn how to save the tyre for the whole duration so I started running out for the last ten minutes of the race.
“And also didn’t have the brakes by the end of the race because I used a lot of brake at the start. We have a couple of settings we use in the car to help with that but I couldn’t as we didn’t have the knowledge from the first race.”
Bewley rocketed off P7 and gained two positions in the first corner to hold down a steady fifth place for almost the entire race. But two laps from the end he was pushed off from behind in turn four and ended up stranded on the grass.
“That dropped me to last as the car didn’t restart. It took a while to get going but I did finish the race but was pretty disappointed after running P5 for the whole race.”
Although he didn’t get the race results he deserved his pole setting time and strong position in race two has put the experienced regular drivers on notice.
With three rounds coming in quick succession before the championship finale in December, Bewley is more confident now heading into Adelaide’s The Bend in three weeks time.
“It’s a very similar layout in a way to Queensland Raceway being very stop-start. Hopefully we can carry that qualifying pace over and sort out the race pace a little bit more.”
Asked to score his performance so far this year out of ten, Bewley says it’s a six or seven.
“Qualifying, I’ve impressed myself quite a bit. Even at Darwin being up there quite quickly and then putting it on pole at Queensland and being around those top guys with very little testing, only one day compared to most teams that did two to three days. I’m stoked with the qualifying progress but still have a lot to learn yet in the races.”
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