Team ready to race
Taupo¯ has its own new local superbike team — and they’re ready for some serious competition.
The Vistalite Racing Team comprises Taupo¯based riders Connor London and Roman Rajek with Royd Walker-Holt of Auckland making up the third member.
While they may be young, the newly-formed team are serious about making a mark on the highly-competitive superbike scene. They have a race mechanic, a suspension technician, a media trainer and someone handling their public relations and social media. They’ve also secured major sponsorship from Vistalite Windows & Doors in Taupo¯, a major advantage in such a costly sport.
Their season kicks off this weekend followed by the Suzuki series in December and the New Zealand superbike series from January to March. Connor will be riding a 1000cc bike and the other two will be on 600cc supersport bikes.
This may be the new team’s first season of racing, but they’re by no means novices. Connor, 22, has spent four years racing in Europe and decided this year he would set up his own team of young riders with plenty of potential.
He says having a team allows him to bring in extra support to keep the riders out on the track.
“We’ve got Aiden Cartwright, our suspension technician, who’s going to be with us fulltime and not a lot of teams have that so that’s something good for us, and we’ve got Graham Cole who’s a very experienced race mechanic. We’ve got Andrew Dewhurst who’s helping us out with media training and Christal Halverston who’s doing our PR and social media.”
Roman Rajek, 19, has been racing since he was 7.
“My old man bought me a motocross bike when I was about 6. I started off in motocross and then turned to road when I was about 12.”
He and Connor met a few years ago through racing and Connor met Royd Walker-Holt, 23, when they were competing together in Auckland in 2012.
“I was racing in Auckland and I met him when he T-boned me in a race,” says Connor. “I met him in the pits afterwards when we were talking. Over the years we’ve always been racing together and banging handlebars and last year he was my main mechanic.”
Royd started racing in 2011 on bikes he built himself in his shed. He started out doing it for fun and then won a national title in 2014 on a bike he built himself but has found it hard to keep on top of the costs involved.
“He’s a key example of who I want to help in my team,” Connor says. “He couldn’t keep racing, so it’s cool to bring him back this year and he was out last weekend.”
A major step was to secure a sponsor and Connor is employed at Vistalite which has a philosophy of supporting young people.
Vistalite manager director Bronek Szpetnar says he and the other Vistalite staff arrived at work one morning to find Connor had plastered posters all over the walls and doors saying ‘sponsor me’.
“What interests us more than anything else was that when we had a meeting with Connor’s dad and he showed us all the marketing that’s going to happen and from that the amount of exposure we can get as a company that really impressed us,” Bronek says. “But Connor [also] works for us and we wanted to help him out as well.”
Connor says he’s thankful for the support because motorcycle racing is such an expensive sport, which in turns leads to it being mostly dominated by older riders.
“For us being young guys, the money is a massive factor and all the money we have goes on the basics like tyres and entry fees. To have a mechanic costs a lot of money so for me it’s awesome in New Zealand to have a team of young people and young riders that have the opportunity to develop and have that support behind them.”
■ The Vistalite Racing Team’s first outing of the 2018 season will be this weekend at the Auckland Motorcycle Club Champs at Hampton Downs on Saturday, followed by the Suzuki Series which starts in December and has three rounds, including one in Taupo¯ and finishes with Whanganui’s famous Cemetery Circuit race on Boxing Day. You can follow the team on Facebook at Vistalite Racing Team.