A few tips from Kiwi ace Shane Van Gisbergen have Simon Evans finally eyeing his first New Zealand motor racing championship.
The 24-year-old Aucklander effectively leads the 2014-15 BNT NZ SuperTourers by more than 100 points as he heads into this weekend’s fourth round of the championship at Hampton Downs and will certainly be hard to beat from here.
He was competitive in Formula Ford, NZV8s and Porsche GT3s, but a title has eluded him thus far and he’s had to operate in the shadow of brother Mitch, the former GP3 champion now making his mark in GP2.
A successful spell sharing the wheel with Van Gisbergen last year seems to have given Evans a new edge to his smooth style.
The good friends won the three-round endurance series that began the overall championship, claiming six of the nine races.
Evans was very close to the hot pace set by Van Gisbergen, who finished second in last year’s V8 Supercar championship.
Evans is feeling confident as he prepares for the Rush Security Waikato 250, the first of the four sprint-race meetings that will conclude the championship, and he likes the Hampton Downs circuit.
“At the endurance meeting there I was only one or two tenths of a second off Shane’s times, which isn’t bad considering the amount of racing he’s done,” Evans said.
“I certainly learnt from Shane during those meetings, though I can’t point to any one thing that stands out; it was a lot of little things.
“One was looking after the tyres – one race was 70 laps on the same set of tyres – so I saw what Shane was doing and learnt from that.”
“One important thing is that you have to be really smooth with the SuperTourers, and I have concentrated on that.”
With two meetings in the South Island, at Ruapuna and Timaru in March, Evans likes the feel fo the calendar.
“I really rate Ruapuna,” Evans says. “I scored my first ever car-racing win there, in Formula Ford, so it’s a special track for me. It’s a technical track because a lot of the corners flow together and if you run wide at one corner it messes you up for the next ones.
“The SuperTourers have never run at Timaru. We just get two practice sessions so we don’t have much time to find the best setup for the track.”
This weekend’s two-day event will be headlined by the Toyota Racing Series who compete for the NZ Motor Cup – one of the most prestigious trophies in New Zealand motorsport featuring some of the worlds greatest young drivers.
Support classes include Porches’, Formula First, Supermini, Ssangyong Racing Series, Wil Sport Hyosung Cup (Motorbikes) and Sportscars.
Stuff.co.nz will have live streaming of the NZ SuperTourers at Hampton Downs this weekend. Check back on the site at the times below for race coverage.
