Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Stockcar driver ends season on a high
“There was a bit on carnage in there and there was people trying to take us out and that kind of thing ... [so to] come through and win it is pretty cool.”
You have to be one of the country’s best stockcar divers to experience the carnage of a Grand Prix and come out on top.
The 2023-24 stockcar season is now a wrap, and Marlborough driver Wade Sweeting has bounced back from injury to have his best season yet on the dirt track.
Sweeting placed on the podium in every championship he entered this summer, nabbing his first national title along the way in the Stockcar Championships Grand Prix, held in Nelson in February.
“You work pretty hard all season and all year to get your car up to a really good standard and a lot of things [have] got to kind of fall in your way,” he said.
“You’ve got to have a good car, you’ve got to be onto it with your driving, and then just a wee bit of luck to get through all the traffic and that kind of thing without getting damaged.
“So it was pretty cool. It was our best achievements to date, so we were pretty over the moon.”
The 22-year-old flew through the qualifying rounds of the “full-on” Grand Prix to make it to the 15-lap final.
“There was a bit on carnage in there and there was people trying to take us out and that kind of thing ... [so to] come through and win it is pretty cool,” he said.
“You can’t really hesitate ... If you want to win it, you’ve got to go out there and do it. So it’s kind of our mentality, just get stuck in.”
Squeezing in 32 weekends of racing this season, his other accolades included winning the Nelson Easter Champs for a fourth year in a row, coming third in a
Wade Sweeting
under-23 national competition, and placing 19th out of about 250 drivers at the New Zealand Stockcar Championship in Taranaki in January.
“It’s just the car being right, me driving good, and just having a bit of luck I think on our side this year,” he said.
Though he wasn’t a mechanic, being an engineer by trade did lend a hand to the upkeep of his vehicle throughout the season, he said.
“If anything breaks it’s our own fault, but we manage to keep on top of it all,” he said.
Sweeting had bounced back following a nasty cage hit at a Canterbury event in January last year, where his vehicle ended up upside down in the middle of the track.
Along with being concussed, Sweeting suffered a bruised right eye socket, a broken shoulder blade, five broken ribs and a cracked vertebra, and bruising on the lungs.
“We had a scary moment down there. No one’s ever been hit like that before, so it was kind of pretty scary for our sport,” he said.