Wellington teenager Ben Stewart has enjoyed a near-perfect start to his debut season contesting the Nexen New Zealand Mazda Racing Series in The Poneke.Co Modular Homes-backed Mazda RX8.
After claiming pole position and winning the first race of the weekend (and his first in a car!) the 16-year-old went on to claim overall victory at the opening round of the series at Timaru’s Levels circuit in early November last year.
Then this year he absolutely dominated the second round of the Nexen Tyre-sponsored national racing series at Cromwell’s Highlands Motorsport Park last weekend (Jan 15-16, 2022) to claim a healthy early lead in the 2021/22 Nexen NZ Mazda Racing Series points standings.
“That’s right and to be perfectly honest it’s still sinking in,” the son of former NZ V8s series regular Phil Stewart said from Christchurch (where he was preparing for this weekend’s third 2021/22 Nexen Series’ round) last night.
It was a seriously impressive performance from the youngster who got his grounding in competition in karts and his introduction to racing cars through the range of local Sim competitions which grew out of the first Covid-19 lockdown of early 2020.
After setting the quickest lap time in both class practise sessions at the Tony Quinn-owned Highlands facility on Friday, Stewart claimed his second pole position in as many meetings on Saturday morning before again winning the first Nexen NZ Mazda Racing Series race of the weekend later that afternoon.
The next day he did even better.
Stewart set a new Mazda RX8 class lap record – 1:50.999 – in the three laps it took him to work his way from P10 to P1 in the reverse grid second race of the weekend. Then he went on to make it three wins from three starts with another emphatic lights-to-flag victory in the 8-lap Nexen Mazda final.held in the early afternoon.
“I actually made it easier on myself in this race by finally nailing a good start then building a comfortable gap back to (teammate) Matt (Horne) in second.”
Proud father Phil Stewart enjoyed some success when he raced a Holden Commodore in the heyday on the NZV8s Touring Category back in the early-to-mid-2000s, But even he has been surprised by how quickly his 16-year-old has ‘got up to speed.’
‘When Ben first said he wanted to race cars instead of karts, there were lots of things I could show him – like how to change gears, how to ‘heel ‘n toe,’ that sort of thing. These days though I’ll ask him why he is – say- braking at a particular point at some corner or another and he will just say ‘ Ow Dad…..look at the data’….and when I do, I’ll see that it is indeed the best place.
“That’s Ben’s doing, not mine. All I can do now is make sure he has a good car under him and a good enough group of sponsors to make sure the bills keep getting paid.”
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