As the annual driver recruitment phase begins over at Toyota Racing New Zealand, there is a tense atmosphere out in the blog-o-sphere as pundits await the news. Who is coming from Australia? Who will be here from Asia? From north or south America? From Britain and Europe? The rumours fly thick and fast, but with one exception, at the moment they are just that – rumours.
In 2018, the Castrol Toyota Racing Series attracted five…no, six…Kiwi drivers, and we nearly had seven, but for an accident of birth (date) that saw Liam Lawson unable to gain an age dispensation to race even though he was 16 by the time the Grand Prix rolled around.
It’s Liam Lawson whose intentions are clearest at this point. Having raced Formula 4 in Australia and driven TRS FT50 cars here on numerous occasions, it would take a cataclysm of the size of the GFC for this young racer and his backers to miss the start of the 2019 championship.
But so far, he’s the only Kiwi to have put his hand up for the premier championship.
It’s not time to panic, but we usually have at least one ‘in the bag’ by now and a clear sense of the intentions of another two or three.
What about young Callum Hedge? Committed to the Toyota 86 Championship already.
Brendon Leitch? Having taken his ITM backing to endurance drives, maybe the career ladder has different rungs for Brendon nowadays.
Rianna O’Meara Hunt? Zac Stichbury? Ronan Murphy? These three are contemporaries of Liam Lawson, all throwing down some impressive finishes in karting, all well capable of stepping up.
But until they have their $200,000-plus admission ticket safely signed up, none of these fast amigos can talk with confidence about TRS or future plans.
This begs the question: in 2018, when we had six-and-a-bit Kiwi drivers in a field of 14-15 cars this year, did we reach ‘peak Kiwi’? Was a local grid component of almost half the field sustainable and healthy or an aberration?
TRS has always seemed to run best when we were putting up 20-25 per cent of the grid under the southern cross flag. Those who carry a flame for yesteryear might argue for more Kiwis, but personally, I’d much rather clone the Armstrongs and Lawsons of this world and aim for quality over quantity.
The Toyota 86 Championship was never intended to be part of the process of arriving at a TRS drive, but in the absence of a credible technology step from Formula First to TRS, for most of this year’s crop of locals it has been a legitimate career step.
Our strong showing this year was impressive for its speed, ability and diversity. Each driver had his own distinctive style on-track, each came from a different background, and each had subtly different career aims.
Some came with coaches, fitness advisors, sport motivators, and in some cases their mums and dads. Each, also, knows where they want to go in their motor racing careers: all the way.
Marcus Armstrong – international Kiwi
From the moment he wheeled his Ferrari-coloured FT50 race car out onto the track at Ruapuna this year, Marcus Armstrong embodied Toyota’s ‘Believe’ motto. The Christchurch-born teen is being hailed as New Zealand’s ‘next most likely’ and currently leads the European Formula 3 Championship. His difficult run in TRS seems to have added fresh steel to his character, and he shows no mercy on track.
His signature move, once other racers settle into a groove, is to start testing the outside of turns for grip and then push alongside a rival, unsettling them and swooping through to take their position. It’s a risky move but when it works it pays huge dividends.
Muse on this: as the rumour mill goes into a frenzy around Brendon Hartley and the Palmie driver struggles with what seems a pretty dodgy F1 steed, the driver tipped to replace him at year end is behind Armstrong in Euro F3. Yes. Behind him. I’m not casting shade on Dan Ticktum for a moment, he’s a fast and experienced racer with some impressive career stats, but he’s Red Bull anointed and you’d have to say that makes the difference in this instance. Armstrong, on the other hand, is New Zealand’s first inductee into the Ferrari Driver Academy.
The FDA has long sent its best and brightest drivers to New Zealand to hone their racecraft and speed during the northern hemisphere winter, when there is little opportunity to even test for the coming year much less compete.
Ever since Raffaele Marciello went up against Nick Cassidy, Hannes van Asseldonk, Damon Leitch and Jordan King here in 2012, the Academy has added a splash of bright red to the grid and pit lane of TRS.
Think of it as a more immersive version of our own Elite Motorsport Academy, which this month won praise from FIA President Jean Todt as being the most effective such programme in the world.
Southern Man
Invercargill-born Brendon Leitch is the second in the family to race TRS and has been a championship regular. He was in harm’s way this year from the very start. Struggling with set-up and pace, Leitch found himself snared into other people’s mid-field battles. As the five-week season progressed, Leitch found his way back into form and started figuring in the front-end battles, culminating in a race win at Taupo.
Now, the world of endurance racing (and a pay packet!) may be the next big thing for Leitch.
Ryan Yardley – learning fast, new speed forged in the TRS crucible
If Ryan Yardley thought stepping up out of a TR 86 sports coupe and into a Toyota FT50 single seater was going to be easy, the speed of the foreigners might have been a big discouragement.
Promising testing pre-season gave way to a mad scramble to find the funding to race the series, meaning the 2016-2017 Toyota 86 Championship winner had little time to familiarise himself with the light but forceful touch required to get that last 1/100th of a second out of a TRS lap. From the outset, this was a learning experience for Yardley and he’s now back at work, grafting hard to pay for his championship. When I spoke to him just after the championship, he was keen to cap off unfinished TRS business by returning in 2019. In the mid-term he is keen to look at a GT drive, possibly in Asia.
Reid Harker – raising his game
Second behind Ryan Yardley in last year’s Toyota 86 Championship, Reid Harker started his first TRS campaign cautiously. The sheer speed of the cars and their identical specification meant there were mid-field battles that were more intense than the races were out in front and Harker was often in the thick of that action.
Taylor Cockerton – an eye on Asia
Fresh back in New Zealand from victory in the Formula Masters Asia championship, Taylor Cockerton was the last Kiwi to confirm for TRS. He began the championship with a distracting midweek trip to test an Audi R8 GT car before flying back to race the second round. Cockerton is another of those racers I discussed in the previous column who sees his future in Asia, drawn there by the diverse categories, plentiful fields and the glitzy paddock environment of GT racing there.
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