I love watching sports writers mangle the Queen’s English. A few years back it was ‘medalling’ – lazy speak for having won a medal, usually at the Commonwealth Games (“ComGames”) or Olympics.
More recently, this astute bunch have come out with “favouritism” which mangles meaning and actually (apparently) refers to someone who is the favourite for a race win or title. Any half decent dictionary will have resisted that lazy use of the word and stuck with the original meaning, being something bestowed on a person without absolute justification.
So we arrive in opening week for the Castrol Toyota Racing Series, and we have a humble response to the straightforward question: do you expect to win the title this year?
It’s an interesting ploy, though not without precedent: the favourite for a title talking down their chances and denying their “favouritism”. Sometimes it works, but sometimes people will just go ‘yeah right’. Sometimes a rival will go ‘I’ll take that’ and step into a huge early error from which they never recover.
As the 20 car grid heads out onto the track at Cromwell today, I wonder which will prove true for Liam Lawson, who’s on the respected Formula Scout website saying he doesn’t expect to win the TRS title this year.
In the story by the site’s founder, Peter Allen, Lawson points out the series is now running a car much closer to regional Formula 3. The FT60 has a new turbo 2.0-litre engine and uses Tatuus’ global T318 platform – the latter being a major point of commonality with regional F3 series around the globe.
Lawson has raced the T318 on one occasion previously, when he dominated the final round of the 2018 Asian F3 season at Sepang, winning all three races.
The unknowns in the equation:
- 19 other racers, all there with their own plans and career maps laid out. Some are here to learn, some to keep their racecraft hot over the northern hemisphere break, some in a bid to get noticed by teams or talent spotters ‘back home’. Some have come with an idea they can win at first attempt. Others are racing to refine their abilities behind the wheel but have no long term open-wheeler plans.
- The engines, which make more power at much lower revs this year thanks to their turbo set-up. Series engine man Dave Gouk has wrung a reliable 285 bhp out of the new four-pots. Series insiders say the new engines have had a dream run through set-up and testing. Missing in action, though, is that blood-curdling howl of the old 2ZZ 1.8 litre n/a engine that powered the first two generations of cars.
- The tyres, with the series switching to Hankook from Michelin, thereby negating a percentage of the set-up data held by the four teams who run these cars. Toyota GAZOO racing NZ have carried out a lot of track testing at as many tracks as possible to get an idea of where these tyres will differ from the French rubber they replace.
Lawson’s plans for the rest of this year are still to be confirmed, although a return to FIA F3 is likely after he finished 11th in the standings last season.
He has retained Red Bull support into 2020 but for his TRS effort – run by champion team M2 – the car will feature local sponsors again rather than a Red Bull livery, unlike his M2 Competition team-mate Yuki Tsunoda. Honda-supported Tsunoda will be making his TRS debut ahead of his step up to Formula 2 this year, after racing against Lawson in both FIA F3 and Euroformula Open in 2019.
The TRS category manager, Nico Caillol, says the field may be the best in the history of the championship. That might go some way to explaining Lawson’s unwillingness to accept the mantle of favourite even though he knows every corner of every circuit the series visits.
Meanwhile, the role of TRS as a shaping-ground for raw talent is already well-known, well proven and needs little re-stating. It’s apparent in the grids of every major FIA race series and a lot more besides.
Also recently posted on the Formula Scout website is a rating of the top twenty drivers to look out for this year. It follows on from the end of season top 20 ranking last year, where Kiwi Marcus Armstrong was ranked fourth.
In this year’s top twenty, the top three names are all ex TRS: Guanyu Zhou, Robert Schwartzman and Marcus Armstrong.
Caio Collet, who will race Formula Renault Eurocup with R-Ace GP, is contesting TRS with mtec this year. I tipped this 17 year old Brazilian racer as one to watch last year and was hoping he’d head down-under for the 2019 series. He is a Renault Sport Academy driver and was fifth in FREC last year. If mtec can put the right engineer behind him and the right setup under him he’s well capable of winning races here.
A couple more should really be here this year: Logan Sargeant (USA, will race FIA F3 with Prema this year), Paul Aron (Estonia, stepping up to Formula Renault Eurocup this year with champion team ART Grand Prix), Christian Lundgaard (likely to partner Armstrong at ART Grand Prix in F2) and maybe Marta Gracia (back in the W Series after finishing fourth last year, also looking for opportunities in regional F3), who gave an early indication she was keen to journey south but is not on the 2020 entry list.
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