Look back in history Sunday: Andy Knight 2007/08 TRS champion

He started competing in the first Toyota Racing Series in 2005 and his results got progressively worse over the next two seasons. It was not until his fourth season in TRS that Christchurch’s Andy Knight finally won the title.

What stood out, and we haven’t seen this since, was that in his first TRS season he competed in two separate championships, TRS and the 2004/05 New Zealand Formula Ford Championship. The team logistics that it involved, the requirements on Knight as a driver and the backing and support from family and sponsors deserves a big kudos.

“The first season I ran in both Formula Ford and TRS,” reflected Knight. “It was very busy jumping out of one (car) and into the other. At the end of the first day of doing this I said, ‘Nah, I can’t do this’ but it did get easier. It was hard work but I got second in both championships.

After that first season Knight focused solely on his TRS campaign finishing third in 2005/06 and then slipping to fourth in 2006/07.

The eight round season started in November 2007 at Pukekohe Raceway, Auckland and finished in Hamilton in April 2008 with a non-championship round at the Hamilton 400 V8 Supercars street race. Logistically for teams it was an awkward season with multiple crossings between the Islands. The traditional January racing at Timaru and Invercargill was moved to late February/early March and didn’t work with poor crowd attendance.

2007-08 TRS calendar

Knight won the opening three races at Pukekohe, another at Ruapuna, in the second round, again at Manfeild Park in the third. His sixth and last win of the season was the NZ Grand Prix at Manfeild. After that Earl Bamber won six of the remaining nine races including the two non-championship races at the Hamilton Street race.

So what made the difference in his fourth and last season?

“We had a new car for the last year and a more organised team with Jim Hewlett and Andy Neale. Andy had helped us in our third season. (Neale would go on to form his own team in 2014 taking the first non-Kiwi, Singaporean Andrew Tang, to win the title.)

“The year I won it Earl Bamber was really competitive. It was his second season and he was running with International Motorsport and Stephen Giles working on it which is always tough to beat. We were all young back then.

“The Toyota was a definite step up from Formula Ford and anything we had had in the country. It was close racing, quite different to now. It was mostly Kiwi drivers. It was a cool time.

Having won the Toyota Racing Series Knight went on to compete in the NZV8s for three seasons then the V8 SuperTourers.

“Now I am competing in the Central Muscle Cars in an Oldsmobile Starfire. It’s a bit of fun with a beer and BBQ at the end of the day. It’s completely different to TRS, less stress and more fun. The great thing is you don’t have to go out and keep buying a new model. Our Oldsmobile will still be ‘current’ for years ahead.”

Overall Points 2007/08 TRS season (Top 15)