No doubt about it, this season’s Toyota 86 Championship series has been a resounding success.
Full fields, many (most?) of NZ’s best young (and not so young, eh JP?) drivers, all (most?) attracted by the series’ ultimate prize – a trip to Australia in June for a test in one of the Triple Eight Motorsport team’s Super-2-spec Holden Commodore Supercars courtesy motorsport benefactor Tony Quinn.
Indeed, after a slow-ish sort of start to life in 2013 the Toyota 86 Championship has – thanks to a number of otherwise unrelated factors – grown and prospered to the point where it now vies with the New Zealand Formula Ford category as THE place to graduate to if, having realistically achieved all you can in karts, the next boxes you would like to tick are in cars.
Key factors in the 86 championship’s appeal are – let’s see.
1/ A world-class level of professionalism in presenting itself to everyone from prospective competitors to casual motorsport fans not seen here since the heady days of the Battery Town-backed Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Championship.
2/ A similarly world-class (i.e., timely release of the right information accompanied by the right photographs via the right digital & analogue platforms) media service backed up by a constantly updated website and online magazine.
3/ A fantastic platform and opportunity for ambitious individuals to ‘go racing’ the ‘modern way.’ i.e. By leasing rather than buying or building a car, then raising sponsorship to pay someone suitably qualified to run it.
4/ And following along from that, a fantastic platform and opportunity for ambitious individuals to set up teams to run drivers and cars on a professional basis
5/ A fantastic platform and opportunity for the new charity-based, fun(d) raising outfits like the Seattle, USA-based Heart of Racing squad to increase its presence here in NZ for not a lot of extra $$$$$
6/ And finally, a fantastic platform – particularly in the wake of the decision by Toyota GAZOO Racing to cancel the 2022 Castrol TRS international single seater series – for Speed Work’s promoter Geoff short to hang his annual summer NZ Championship series ‘support class’ list off.
That’s one compelling list all right; so much so that many of you could well be forgiven for thinking that I am the #1 member of the NZ Toyota 86 Championship fan club.…
Er, not quite!
Because?
Because – I guess – despite years racing and more recently drifting, cars, I still ‘identify primarily’ as a Karter. And bar the honourable exception of young (he’s still only 18) Marco Giltrap – who, in his second full season in the 86 category, ended up finishing third overall – there were very slim pickings for the comparatively large number of contemporary National championship level NZ karters who, no doubt attracted by the impressive prize pool, chose to make their move from karts to cars via the Toyota 86 Championship this year
Of course, if you dig down deep enough you will find that the majority of current and former competitors in a Toyota 86 series run here over the past nine years will be able to call up some quite significant karting CVs of their own.
There will always be exceptions too – former NZ Motocross champion John Penny and current Sim star Hugo Allan are two that stand out from the current crop……
There must come a time, too, in every racing driver’s life when what he or she did in a kart in their early-to-mid-teens’ bears so little resemblance, so little relevance, to what they might be doing 5, 10, 15 years later that I often wonder why I still tag some drivers as ‘former NZ Rotax Max Light title holder Bob A’Job or ex-karter BigRevKev Indrum.
Just habit, I guess.
Speaking of which there seems to be no easy (or even obvious) path to the top step of the NZ Toyota 86 Championship podium.
Like his older ‘bro Michael before him for instance, defending 2021 title winner, and now two-time NZ Toyota 86 series champion Rowan Shepherd, got his career start in karts. But since 2011 he has focused exclusively on cars, earning back-to-back NZ Formula First championship titles in 2013 & 2014 before a move to tin-tops via the SsangYong Ute series in 2015 and the Nexen Tyre Mazda RX8 Cup series, which he won outright in 2020.
Runner-up to Shepherd for a second-year running was another established all-rounders Simon Evans, third, young Auckland kart-turned-car racer Marco Giltrap and fourth, Sim specialist Hugo Allan (17) and also from Auckland.
Of course, no series is perfect and there were aspects of the 2022 Toyota 86 Championship series which I felt were left wanting.
Like?
Like Zac Stichbury’s up and down debut season.
Though he ended up a lowly 11th in the overall series points standings, at least Zac can point to two stand-out rounds.
The first was actually the second (round of the 2022 series) at Christchurch’s Mike Pero Motorsport Park Ruapuna) where Zac qualified 7th quickest before carding an 8-4-8 run through the three category races to earn the weekend’s Rookie award.
From that point on however his season took an unfortunate turn for the worst.
With an extra ‘make-up’ race on the programme at the third round of the 2022 86 series at Hampton Downs in February, it was the perfect time for Zac to step up to the plate and shine!
Instead – after only managing to qualify 14th the determined young gun was forced into defence mode, finishing his first race of the weekend in P10, the second (reverse top 10 gird race which he actually started from pole) in P9, the third back in P10 and the fourth in P11.
Despite the best will in the world the misery was only compounded at the fourth round of the 2022 Championship series three weekend’s later at Pukekohe Park Raceway.
There Zac again could only find enough speed in his 86 to set the 14th quickest qualifying lap and finish 14th in the first race of the weekend later in the day.
He then slid back a place to cross the finish line in P15 in the second 86 series race on Sunday morning before making it all the way back up to p10 at the finish of the third.
Zac’s second breakthrough round was the Taupo one in March where he was an absolute revelation, being comfortably quickest in practise on Friday, quickest in qualifying on Saturday morning then posting a lights-to-flag victory in the first race of the weekend later the same afternoon.
Sunday didn’t produce quite the same turnaround, with a rare dnf in the second race and run to P12 in the third
Next week: More on NZ’s rich history of one make classes and cars,
Comments