Top US-based Kiwi racing drivers Matt Halliday and Wade Cunningham will join leading New Zealand team International Motorsport for the enduro rounds of the 2012 V8SuperTourer NZ motor racing series at Taupo, Pukekohe and Christchurch over the next three months.
Halliday, 33, will share the Driven-backed #96 Ford Falcon with team young gun Ant Pedersen while Cunningham, 27, will share the Driven-backed #2 Ford Falcon with Jonny Reid.
Reid and Pedersen are already race winners in the inaugural series and V8SuperTourer team manager Nick Williamson says that in Halliday and Cunningham the pair have co-drivers who can help them win more.
“Matt and Wade have both driven and worked for the team before and have complementary skills in terms of the drivers we are pairing them with. Matt, for instance, has quite a long history now of co-driving in the V8 Supercar series in Australia, and though Wade is still very much known as a single-seater specialist we liked what we saw when we ran him in an endurance race at Hampton Downs a couple of years ago so we think he will adapt fairly quickly to a purpose-built race car like the V8SuperTourer.”
For the past five years Halliday has been based in Los Angeles from where he has commuted to races here, in Australia and in Europe. This year he has been contesting rounds of the FIA GT1 sports car championship, winning the first one at Zolder in Belgium from pole, and next month and in October he will join Australian driver Dean Fiore in the second Jim Beam Racing Ford Falcon at the endurance rounds of Australia’s V8 Supercar championship at Sandown and Bathurst.
Before his move to the FIA GT1 championship this year Halliday contested the Formula 1-supporting Mobil1 Porsche SuperCup series and before that the former New Zealand Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge front-runner spent two seasons sharing driving duties in New Zealand’s A1GP World Cup of Motorsport car with compatriot Jonny Reid.
Cunningham, meanwhile, is best known for his efforts behind the wheel of a kart – he remains the only driver from the Southern Hemisphere to have won the World Karting Championship (in 2003) – and an Indy Lights single seater, claiming the Firestone Indy Lights series title in the United States in 2005 and going on to win the Indianapolis 500-supporting Indy Lights class race, the Freedom 500, a record three times.
Since then the Indianapolis-based driver has also contested a number of IndyCar races, claiming a best finish of seventh in the Kentucky Indy 300 race at the Kentucky Motor Speedway last year and qualifying for but being an early retirement thanks to mechanical problems in the Indianapolis 500 earlier this year.
Both drivers say they have been keeping a close eye on the new V8 SuperTourer series and that a co-driver spot with a top team like International Motorsport is the best way to experience it first hand.
“International Motorsport is a great team and I have driven for them many times over the years. The series looks very strong and I’m definitely looking forward to it,” Halliday said from New York this week.
“It’s a new challenge and one I’m also looking forward to,” said Cunningham. “It’s a purpose-built race car with a decent amount of power and International Motorsport is a professional team so I know I will be looked after.”
This season’s endurance series-within-a-series kicks off with two back-to-back 200km races at the recently re-named Ricoh Motorsport Park at Taupo on Sunday September 02.
That meeting is then followed by similar two-driver enduro meetings at Pukekohe Park Raceway over the October 27 and 28 weekend and Christchurch’s Powerbuilt Tools Raceway on November 24 and 25.
You can follow the progress of the two International Motorsport pairings of Jonny Reid and Wade Cunningham, and Ant Pedersen and Matt Halliday on International Motorsport’s website (www.internationalmotorsport.co.nz) or on the team’s new facebook page.
