Home track advantage for young Canty driver
Brayden Phillips isn’t old enough to apply for his driver’s licence but the 14-year-old from Christchurch has done more laps around Highlands than any of his rivals in this weekend’s Mazda Pro7 Series.
The Pro7 is one of the support categories for the Highlands 501 and Phillips has been a member at the Cromwell circuit since he was
12-years-old. His grandfather Dennis is a retired used car salesman from Christchurch and he introduced him to go-karts at a young age.
‘‘Brayden and I are the car enthusiasts in the family, and Highlands is our man cave. We’re down there pretty much every school holidays so he’s done hundreds of laps around the place at this stage,’’ Dennis Phillips said.
As well as selling cars, Dennis was something of a speedster in his day. He holds the lap record for the Pre65 Racing category at Wigram.
‘‘I set that in a Mustang in the early 1990’s and it still stands. It helps that Wigram closed down shortly afterwards but I’ll still take it.’’ Dennis got Brayden into a gokart when he was five-years-old but he took some time to get confident behind the wheel.
‘‘He’s always talked about cars and known cars inside out but he was a little nervous when he started racing. It didn’t help that he rolled his go-kart in his second or third race.
‘‘He was a bit shy after that but he’s got his confidence back. When he turned 12, I bought him a Mazda
RX5 and we used Highlands as his training ground. I took him around a few times but it didn’t take long for him to get the hang of it. It soon got to the stage where he was five seconds a lap quicker than me.’’
Brayden made his debut in the
Pro7 series at Teretonga earlier this month and while he finished at the back of the pack, he was just a couple of seconds off the lead car.
‘‘I went alright,’’ he said. ‘‘I’d never driven the track before so it was quite interesting. Hopefully I should go a bit better around Highlands.’’
The South Island Pro7 series secretary Paul Wallace said the series had been running for over
25 years and it was an ideal proving ground for young driving talent.
‘‘We’ve got quite a few teenagers racing this year. I wouldn’t like to say Brayden is the youngest ever to compete in the category but at 14 he’s got to be one of the youngest.
‘‘It’s a great category for drivers young and old to show their skills. It comes down to driver skill and car preparation rather than how much money you have to throw at a race car. It’s a really inclusive category and there’s great camaraderie amongst the drivers. On track, the drivers are all fiercely competitive but off it they’re good mates,’’ Wallace said.
‘‘My son Sam blew his gearbox in the last meeting and there’s no way Sam and I would have been able to fix it in time for the next race but we had a small army of the other competitors all over the car putting the gearbox in so that he could line up on the starting grid.’’ It was the first time the Pro7 series has competed at Highlands.