Bob McMurray writes from the 2016 Toyota Racing Series…….
To be honest Wednesday was not that special with rain in the morning as well as a cold and strong breeze.
Funny how everybody immediately says “you should have been here yesterday / last week / last month / whatever, when it was (anything between) 24c and 40c”!
The afternoon brightened up a bit and the track dried out but the wind persisted as the grid of 20 cars took to the track for a ‘shakedown’ test day.
The drivers were split into two groups with the ‘rookies’, those who had not driven the TRS FT50 previously, in one group and the rest in the second.
The sessions were to be of 30 mins each with the opportunity to do three thirty minute sessions during the day for each group.
Old tyres, windy conditions, new drivers, track slightly damp in places….
Well…the recipe was there for some potential car damage and accidents but in fact, apart from a couple of minor spins, a couple of red flags to recover stalled cars, the sessions all went off without real incident.
The first thing to notice is that the on track commentators are in for a hard job with all six of the Giles Racing Team cars in the same basic livery of orange.
Lovely colour of course but it is going to be interesting to try and tell them apart at a glance.
The on track commentator for the series?
Me!
Oh Joy!
Straight on to Thursday and straight into much better weather.
A warm, sunny day and more on track action for all the drivers.
The day for the drivers began at the track with a driver briefing by Motorsport New Zealand’s Wayne Scott and TNZ / TRS superstar Sam MacNeill.
They went over a lot of very detailed stuff that is pertinent to New Zealand rules and specific to this track.
The start procedure, practice starts, track limits, weaving on track, the use of the safety car, safety car procedures, driving standards, the start procedure, wet weather driving, penalties and all sorts of other related stuff.
Long and painstakingly explained but necessary.
TRS series photographer Bruce Jenkins took all the mug shots of the drivers and it was good to start putting faces to names and names to helmet designs.
Some interesting people in the cars this year, as in past years obviously and I am sure a good few stories will emerge as the season rushes past.
Our French representative this year, Timothe Buret, hails from Montpelier in Southern France, a hotbed of Rugby and he explained to me that he plays for a club side in the city, in his words “on the outside front row of the scrum”.
I reckon it is the first time we have had an active rugby player driving a TRS car.
Same result as Wednesday in terms of keeping the things on the road but one time surprised a few people in session #1 of the day when young Canadian rookie Devlin DeFrancesco suddenly went almost two seconds faster than his best time to date.
The drivers had all been out for both days on the oldest of test tyres so that they could simply become acclimatised to the cars and track.
After all, the tyre supply is limited so no point in wasting them testing.
Devlin had in fact put new tyres on his car but for a very good reason.
Devlin is at this moment only 15 years of age and is not yet licensed to drive a TRS car in an ‘official’ test session.
So he will not be able to drive the car on either Friday or Saturday but his 16th birthday is on Sunday so all restrictions are off and a’racing he can go.
At least he now has some experience of driving on new tyres as all his compatriots on the grid went on to the new tyre for the second session of the day.
Some fast times were set.
The lap record stands at 1min 17.310 set by Stefan Reiner in 2015 but Ferdinand Hapsburg beat that with a time of 1min 16.733 and Pedro Piquet, under the watchful gaze of three time Formula 1 World Champion father Nelson, set a time of 1min 17.251.
The second session was led by experienced GP2 driver Artem Markelov with 1min 16.726 then Kiwi James Munro with a real statement of intent at 1min 16.835.
Next was Chinese driver and Ferrari Driver Academy protégé Guanyu Zhou 1min 16.892, then with fourth in the session the youngest ever winner of the World Karting Championship, as a 14 year old in 2014, Lando Norris from the UK with 1min 17.029.
In session #1 Canadian driver Kami Laliberte had an ‘off’ into the gravel at turn one causing a red flag but no real harm done to either him or the car and once the retrieval team extricated the thing from the beach the session got back underway with no more breaks.
TOYOTA FINANCE 86 CHAMPIONSHIP
Also in action for the first time this weekend were the Toyota Finance 86 Championship cars.
After travelling the world racing Karts, Marcus Armstrong came back to the series with a bang and set the fastest time of the day beating series newcomer Jaxon Evans from Australia, last year’s champion Ash Blewett and father Rick Armstrong into second, third and fourth place respectively.
MORE (HOPEFULLY) LATER
Regards
Bob
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