Simon Evans achieved another milestone as he won the BNT NZ SuperTourers race at Hampton Downs today.
The Aucklander came to the Rush Security Waikato 250 meeting as the effective leader of the 2014-15 championship after his fine results in the three-round endurance series that formed the first section of the overall championship.
Evans and V8 Supercar star Shane Van Gisbergen won six of the nine races in that series, sharing Evans’ Smeg Commodore.
But today marked a breakthrough as Evans won a BNT NZ SuperTourers race for the first time as a solo driver, although he had come very close to victory at times in the 2014 championship.
He acknowledged that this was a special victory for that reason. And it was a commanding victory, as he led away from his pole position and soon pulled clear of the field.
“I got a really clean first lap and pulled a gap,” he said.
“I pushed hard to build the gap and then backed off a little to maintain it. I didn’t really look back.”
Evans’ younger brother Mitch, who is about to start his third season in GP2 (the category immediately below Formula One), finished his first ever “tintop” race in fourth in a second Smeg Commodore.
“It’s a racing car; it’s reasonably quick,” he said. “It’s slower than what I’m used to, and not as nimble, but it’s still fun to race.
“I’d like to have a better car, I’d like to be quicker,” he added, revealing his competitive instinct.
Australian Tony D’Alberto ran second in the opening laps, under increasing pressure from young Aucklander Andre Heimgartner. These two both raced Holdens.
Eventually Heimgartner dived up the inside at the downhill first turn to take second and although he set the fastest lap of the race he was too far back to catch Evans.
“We’ve got good race pace – we found a couple of things in practice that really helped us,” Heimgartner, who stands second in the championship, said.
This was his last BNT NZ SuperTourers meeting before he goes to Australia to concentrate on his V8 Supercars season with the new Super Black team, so he said he was particularly keen to win a race tomorrow.
Racing in the Kiwi series had enabled him to develop to the point where he was fast enough to be offered a drive in V8 Supercars. “SuperTourers has helped me a lot,” he said.
D’Alberto, an experienced V8 Supercar driver, is contesting the whole four-round sprint series that began today in Angus Fogg’s Holden, which was not handling the corners quite as he wanted it to.
“I’m struggling to get the car to turn in, and that compromises my mid-corner speed,” the Aussie explained. “But it’s not too far away, and it’s not a bad start to the weekend. Simon and his team are doing a great job.”
Mitch Cunningham was fifth in his Falcon, narrowly ahead of Dominic Storey’s Holden, while Tim Edgell brought his Holden home seventh.
Tomorrow sees two more races and then in March the series moves to the South Island with meetings at Ruapuna (Christchurch) and Levels (Timaru).
