The story goes that a young Alex Wurz, competing in the 1992 NZ Formula Ford season, was, like most teenagers, rather disorganised. So much so, that he turned up to race at Bay Park (NZ) with only one driving shoe! Having borrowed another, the red and blue footed driver went on to win and from then on always drove with one red and one blue racing shoe!
Wurz (Van Diemen RF91 – see main picture), who had finished runner up in the 1991 Austrian Formula Ford Championship, came to New Zealand with a team run by Walter Lechner Racing School which also included Michael Fritscher (Van Diemen RF91) who finished in third and Jochen Bauer (Van Diemen RF91). Lechner teamed up with John Crawford who was runing local Andy Neale (Reynard FF91) and Japanese driver Hiro Kojima (Van Diemen RF90).
Also, in the field that year was the late Ashley Stitchbury (Van Diemen RF90), Nigel Barclay (Swift Ford), Rob Lester (Tui 85) and Gary Croft (Swift SC92F) who went on to win the ’92 title.
John Crawford recalls that he was ‘very fast’ while Wurz described his time in New Zealand to the Motorsport Magazine (March 2011) as follows, “I raced in Austria, Germany and Czechoslovakia, won the Austrian junior title and a round of the German series.
“Over the winter I went to New Zealand with two other FF racers to do the Peter Jackson Series. I was quick, but I was totally stupid, got too excited, had a lot of crashes. I was still only 17. I spoke no English then, and of course our money ran out completely.
“We were using the prize money from each event to pay for our meals and hotels, but in the last round I crashed again and earned nothing. So we couldn’t pay our final bill. When we checked out we gave the hotel manager what little we had left, but he was totally furious, he really lost it, and threw us out without any breakfast. By the time we got to Christchurch Airport for the flight home, we were starving. We pooled our small change and it was enough for one Big Mac, which we divided very exactly into three.”
Little did we know that he would go on to compete in Formula One with Benetton, Williams and as a test driver for both Honda and Brawn GP. He also became a two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans (1996 and 2009).
Now we have his son, Charlie, lining up on the grid this Saturday for the opening race of the 2023 Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship. I doubt that he will be starving by the time he heads home. Let’s hope we see that he is just as quick as his father was over 30 years ago!
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