Celebrate a golden era for motorsport
THIS MAY BE A GOLDEN ERA FOR KIWI MOTORSPORT — CELEBRATE IT
The Supercars are coming to town — or perhaps what I should say is the Kiwis are coming to town and bringing the Supercars with them.
The battle for the 2018 Supercars Championship has Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin on virtually equal terms in car performance. Just 14 points separate them.
That points advantage is McLaughlin’s but there are still 600 points on offer, taking into account the ITM Auckland Supersprint and final event of the season the Coates Hire Newcastle 500.
McLaughlin had the title within his grasp last year but errors in the final round threw the championship into the grateful arms of Jamie Whincup, van Gisbergen’s team-mate.
The question is just who will be the most desperate to win the title and which one of these drivers will harness that desperation and transform it into cold hard racing skill when it counts?
Make no mistake, the Supercars series is a great racing concept.
It is honest to goodness, loud, brutal entertainment with comparatively low-tech engines and drivers skilled enough to haul these beasts around the tightest of tracks, door handle to door handle.
Next weekend, at the “grand old lady” of New Zealand motor racing, Pukekohe Park Raceway, is the biggest motor sport event of the year for this country and Kiwis figure highly.
Also racing next weekend at Pukekohe are a new breed of young New Zealand hopefuls filling the grid of the Toyota 86 Championship. It aims, like the Toyota Racing Series, to promote young drivers so they can eventually join the amazing surge of successful Kiwi drivers on the world stage.
On that stage, just last weekend, was Kiwi driver Brendon Hartley who, after some technical disqualifications affecting other drivers, finished a competitive ninth at the US Grand Prix in Austin Texas.
His future in this pinnacle of the sport has been the subject of conjecture since he debuted for the Toro Rosso team at the same venue in 2017.
To his credit he is still with the team, under difficult circumstances and in trying times, and that conjecture continues with other names being regularly cited as his replacement.
Whatever his future holds, he can be proud of the job he has done.
So, we have Hartley in Mexico for the F1 Grand Prix this weekend; five Kiwi drivers in Supercars at Pukekohe next weekend; the TR 86 class and other support classes on a card of exciting racing, and the huge successes of Nick Cassidy in Japan, Jono Lester, Hayden Paddon and many others. What else is there to do but support them all?
This may be a golden era for Kiwi drivers — so celebrate it.
As van Gisbergen says of the ITM 500 at Pukekohe: “You do get excited for the big races, the Clipsal, the Gold Coast and the Bathurst, but coming home with all the extra fans cheering for you and seeing the flags on the hill, it is certainly a special moment and a very special weekend for all the Kiwi drivers.”