MOTORSPORT: Aussie's flying start in NZ Toyota Racing Series

Australian Thomas Randle won a race at the opening round of New Zealand’s open-wheeler Toyota Racing Series amid controversy and sits second on the points table among 20 young drivers from around the world with big ambitions.

Randle, 20, from Melbourne, picked up the victory in the second of three races that comprised the opening round of Toyota series at Christchurch’s Ruapuna Park after New Zealander Taylor Cockerton and Brazilian Pedro Piquet were relegated.

Cockerton, first across the line, copped a 10-second penalty for having jumped the start in the 15-lap race, while Piquet – a son of 1981, ’83 and ’87 Formula 1 world champion Nelson Piquet and in his second year in the NZ series – was penalised 30 seconds for excessively blocking Randle. Two other 10-second penalties also were handed out.

Combined with fourth place in the first race of the round and fifth in the 20-lap Lady Wigram Trophy, Randle already has 178 points – just three less than Richard Verschoor of the Netherlands, a 16-year-old member of Red Bull’s junior squad through which Daniel Ricciardo advanced to F1.

“Great first round at Ruapuna … bring on round two next weekend [at Invercargill’s Teretonga circuit],” Randle has posted on his Facebook page.

Randle is driving for Garry Orton’s Victory Motor Racing, whose previous drivers in the series have included Russian Daniel Kyvat, an F1 contemporary of Ricciardo and a teammate of the West Australian at Scuderia Toro Rosso and for a little more than a season at Red Bull Racing.

Two other Australians are in the Toyota series field – Harry Hayek, 17, of Sydney, who is 12th on 88 points after best results of ninth and 10th in Christchurch, and Luis Leeds, 16, another Red Bull junior from Melbourne who is 13th on 78 points.

Hayek and Leeds are both driving for the Giles Motorsport team of Kiwi former McLaren F1 senior mechanic Steve Giles. Verschoor also is with that team.

After Teretonga in the deep south of NZ’s South Island, the other rounds are on the North Island at Hampton Downs, Taupo and Manfeild – concluding on February 11-12.

Third in the series is Indian Jehan Daruvala, who has 142 points after winning the Lady Wigram Trophy for the second year.

The first race of Christchurch weekend was won by hometown 16-year-old Marcus Armstrong on debut after a bold overtake around the outside of Daruvala after a mid-race safety car.

Armstrong, a member of the Ferrari Junior Academy, is fifth in the points, one behind Austria’s Ferdinand Hadsburg.

Randle’s career has been mainly in open-wheelers so far, although among the 13 cars he raced and tested last year were trials in a Nissan Motorsport Altima Supercar and an Erebus Motorsport Mercedes-Benz SLS GT.

He has a deal to race a Ligier JSP3 sports car this year in the British LMP3 Cup, a six-round series with races at Donington Park, Brands Hatch, Silverstone and Snetterton as well as Belgium’s famous Spa-Francorchamps.

That deal is with Douglas Motorsport, which fielded him in Formula 3 in Britain last year, and has him eyeing a pathway to LMP1 – the premier prototypes in the World Endurance Championship, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, like the Porsche 919 Hybrid that Mark Webber raced in the last three years of his professional career.

Discarded Supercars driving standards observer (DSO) Jason Bargwanna had a win at Ruapuna Park, driving a Toyota Camry in the NZ Touring Car round.

However, Bargwanna missed out on the overall victory for the round by one point to NZ rival Simon Evans in a Holden Commodore.

Bargwanna lost several seconds when he pitted after a restart and got caught behind the safety car travelling slowly in the pit lane in the third and final race, although Evans had to carry 50kg “success ballast” in the last two races.

Moss, and Manor, hoping for sunnier times
Sir Stirling Moss, the 87-year-old winner of 16 grands prix considered the best driver never to win the F1 world championship (he was runner-up four times) by those who overlook Gilles Villeneuve, has been in hospital in Singapore with complications from a serious chest infection.

Moss, whose F1 career was cut short in 1962 by a bad accident at Goodwood in Britain, was active in historic racing until he was 81.

A message on his website said, in that ever-cheerful Moss manner, that – having missed a Christmas cruise after being admitted to hospital on December 22 – he and his wife “hope to stay in Singapore to enjoy a few days recuperating at a lovely hotel, being thoroughly spoilt, whilst lying in the sun by a gorgeous swimming pool”.

Meanwhile, in the bleak British winter the Manor F1 team that is in administration is hoping to see some sunshine in its fight for survival by Friday’s deadline, with reports of a potential Asian rescuer.

Although a car designed to the 2017 regulations allowing more aggressive aerodynamics and wider tyres is on the drawing boards, Manor apparently has asked if it could run a modified version of its Mercedes-powered 2016 model this year.

It could miss the first three races of the season starting in Melbourne on the last weekend of March but would forfeit its franchise if it missed four.

Volkswagen deal for dual rallycross world champ Solberg
Petter Solberg, winner of the first two world rallycross championships in 2014 and ’15 in a privateer Citroen, will have something close to a full factory Volkswagen for this year’s World RX.

Norwegian Solberg has teamed up with Swede Johan Kristoffersson to field a pair of Polo RXs in the 12-round championship, starting in Barcelona on the first weekend of April and ending with a new event in Cape Town, South Africa, in mid-November.

The Polos have been developed by VW in Hanover, Germany, but the team will run from Solberg’s base at Torsby in Sweden.

While Solberg lost his World RX crown last year, Kristoffersson was runner-up to fellow Swede and Audi stalwart Mattias Ekstrom.

Solberg said his new VW arrangement, backed by Volkswagen Sweden and its distributors, was “the dream”.

“Everything is possible now. From the start we are aiming at gold in the championship,” he said.

“My team has worked so hard for so many years to be in the position to make this deal and now we’re here – it’s fantastic.”