I’m a ‘glass-half-full’ kind of guy. Always have been. Hopefully always will be. Sure some things piss me off. I’ve also been known to flare up a little too quickly for some people’s liking. At the end of the day though I’m an optimist rather than a pessimist and – despite often being sorely tempted – I’ve made a career out of talking things/people/events etc up rather than down.
The subject of this week’s column – the frankly incredible success rate of Kiwi drivers on the world stage – is a good example. For an island nation, tucked (way) down at the bottom of the South Pacific, with a population (4.6 million) give or take the same as the Republic of Ireland or city of Melbourne (both 4.7) and smaller than Sydney (4.8) we punch so far above our weight on the world motorsport stage in fact that it almost defies belief.
Yet, when I started researching the subject I realised that – bizarre as it might seem – no-one else appeared to have attempted to even try and compile such a list, let alone do something worthwhile (like lobbying government for a share of the obscene amount of money poured into stick-and-ball and Olympic sports every year) with it.
So here goes!
In the 59 years since a young Bruce McLaren signed with the Cooper F1 team and won his first F1 GP (at Sebring in 1959) Kiwis have won – let’s see – the F1 World Championship (Denny Hulme), the Indianapolis 500 (Scott Dixon), the Le Mans 24 Hour (Bruce McLaren, Chris Amon, Earl Bamber and Brendon Hartley), plus everything from the Can-Am series (Bruce McLaren & Denny Hulme won two titles apiece) to the Pikes Peak hill climb (Rod and son Rhys Millen) the Touring Car World Cup (Paul Radisich), and more recently the World GP3 series (Mitch Evans).
We’ve also had four – that I can think of – Kiwis win major ‘feeder’ single seater series in the US (Dave McMillan in Formula Atlantic in 1982, Rob Wilson in the 1990 Barber Saab Pro Series in 1990 and Scott Dixon (2000) and Wade Cunningham (2005) Indy Lights.
Speaking of Wade – who by the way is pretty much retired now and focusing on a job with product development company Glassboard in Indianapolis – the now 33-year-old Aucklander won the World Karting Championship title in 2003 after a stellar career in karts here, and in to Australia, Japan and Europe.
He also drove for Sir Colin Giltrap’s A1 Team New Zealand A1GP team which twice finished second in that promising but ultimately ill-fated series (2006/7 & 2007/08 seasons) with fellow former kart racers Matt Halliday and Jonny Reid the nominated drivers.
Later on the team added two new series winning drivers to the line-up, Earl Bamber who won the Formula BMW Asia title as a 16-year-old in 2006, and Chris van der Drift, who won the Italy-based International Formula Master title in 2008.
Not a lot of people know that one of the drivers Bamber comprehensively smoked in that single heady year flying (by himself to boot) to and from Malaysia, China and Indonesia, was Aussie Daniel Ricciardo, who as we all know went on to career in F1 with Red Bull. Without Ricciardo’s Dad Joe’s seemingly bottomless pit of WA mining money, Bamber’s career stalled after his A1GP appearances, but older and wiser the Wanganui-born ace returned to Asia and a job teaching advanced driving skills to local Porsche drivers.
That in turn led to a drive in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia series, which he won twice before being picked up by the factory and winning the F1-supported Porsche Supercup Series in 2014 and the first of his two Le Mans 24 Hour overall co-victories in 2015.
Back to Formula Master for a moment and though that category was ultimately short-lived its name lives on in the Formula Masters China Series, which – you guessed it – was won by a young Kiwi driver, James Munro from Christchurch, in 2014.
Still in Asia and arguably the greatest achievement by a Kiwi racing driver outside Denny Hulme’s F1 title in 1967, and Wade Cunningham’s World Karting one in 2003, is that of TRS series champ and three-time NZ Grand Prix title winner Nick Cassidy who (with fellow works Lexus driver Ryo Hirakawa) won the 2017 Japanese Super GT title.
Many years before, of course, both Graeme Lawrence and Steve Millen won Formula Pacific Series titles in Asia. Better not forget young Ken Smith when we are talking about Asia either. As well as his three NZGP title wins here he has also won the Penang Grand Prix three times, the Selangor Grand Prix twice, as well as the Malaysian Grand Prix once.
With brother Rod, Steve Millen sought greater competition in the US after doing as much as the pair could based here. Between them they proceeded to win the US Grand National Sport Trucks championship title five times (Steve twice and Rod three-times) before Steve returned to tarmac, where he twice won the IMSA GTS championship (driving a Nissan 300ZX) and also won both the Sebring 12 Hour and Daytona 24 Hour races outright and his class in the Le Mans 24 Hour race.
As well as winning the Grand National Sport Trucks title three times, younger brother Rod also won the Pikes Peak hillclimb outright five times after a stellar rally career which saw him win the US SCCA Pro Rally Championship five times as well as the FIA Asia-Pacific Championship once and our own international hill climb, the Silverstone Race to The Sky, in 2002.
Let’s not forget the achievements of Rod’s son Rhys either. Auckland-born Rhys won the US Formula Drift title in 2005, was crowned Red Bull Drifting World Champion in 2008, and is now a two-time overall winner of the annual Pikes Peak Hillclimb and current (no pun intended) holder of the record up the 20km climb in an electrically-powered vehicle!
To Formula 1 now and Wikipedia lists nine different Kiwis as having made F1 starts. The latest, obviously, is Brendon Hartley, though bar the former ‘Trio at the Top’ of Bruce McLaren (4 wins), Denny Hulme (8 and the 1967 World Championship crown) and Chris Amon (who famously never won a F1 race but had 96 starts) the others (Howden Ganley, Tony Shelly, Graham McRae, John Nicholson and Mike Thackwell) enjoyed slimmer pickings.
At this level though you had to be very good just to get a foot in the door. Graham McRae, for instance, dominated the F5000 category here and in the US in the early 1970s, winning the Tasman Series in 1971,72 and 73 and the L&M Continental Championship in the US in 1972 before going on to earn a coveted Rookie of the Year ring in the Indianapolis 500 in 1973.
McRae is also one of five Kiwis to win the Australian Gold Star (aka the Australian Drivers’ Championship), the top award for its premier single-seaters class. He won it 1978 (in a car of his own design, no less), and has since been followed by expat Graham Watson, Scott Dixon, Simon Wills and Daniel Gaunt.
John Nicholson’s case was an interesting one as well. Though arguably better known (and no doubt remunerated) for his F1 engine building business, Nicholson McLaren Engines, he was also a typically talented driver and engineer (in the McLaren, Ganley, McRae mould), twice winning the UK Formula Atlantic Championship (in 1973 and 1974) before his brief dalliance with F1.
And of course, you can’t talk about racing in Australia without mention of Bathurst (take a bow Greg Murphy with your four wins plus that much mentioned ‘Lap of the Gods’ in 2003.) Equally impressive is the win record set by ‘Gentleman’ Jim Richards (seven) not to mention his NZ-born son Steven’s Greg Murphy-equalling four wins in ‘The Great Race.’
And I could go on, but I’m way over my requested word length yet I have really only scratched the surface. I’ve also limited myself – with the odd exception – to major international championships and circuit racing, which is why I haven’t mentioned rally greats like Possum Bourne and Hayden Paddon. Or for that matter some of our true pioneers like Sir William (Bill) Hamilton who raced at Brooklands before returning home to compete in the first NZ Motor Cup races at Muriwai in the 1920s, or Speedway Midget ace Frank ‘Satan’ Brewer who raced professionally in California between the two World Wars.
That’s just on four wheels as well. On two we have a multiple World Grand Prix class winner in Hugh Anderson, plus World Motocross champions Shayne King, and Ben Townley and Katherine Prumm, plus – of course – the Speedway stars Ronnie Moore, Barry Briggs and Ivan Mauger. Nine Kiwi riders, including the likes of Bruce Anstey, Graeme Crosby, Dennis Ireland and Hugh Anderson, have also won races at the Isle of Man TT.
But seriously, I’ve got to stop, otherwise I’ll break the internet.
It’s your turn now. I must have missed heaps of worthwhile international achievements by Kiwi driver and/or riders overseas.
So who are they? What did they win? And where did they do that winning?
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