He’s being compared to a young Craig Lowndes on-track, but Scott McLaughlin says he wants to emulate the V8 Supercars legend off the track as well.
McLaughlin, the New Zealand teenage sensation who has won twice already this season for Garry Rogers Motorsport, admires Lowndes’ positive attitude and fan friendliness out of the car as much as his skill in it.
“I am trying to base myself off Lowndes,” he told v8supercars.com.au. “He has so many fans, he is the smartest guy and he has an awesome attitude. I’d like to be like him one day.”
McLaughlin said he was aware of the racing comparison being made with Lowndes, who burst onto the scene in 1994 as a 20-year old with a dazzling drive at Bathurst for HRT and then went on to win his first touring car Championship in 1996.
“It is obviously a massive honour, because he has gone so far in the sport and he is a champion,” McLaughlin said.
However, the 19-year old from Christchurch made it clear that while he wants to be as fan friendly and positive as Lowndes, he will always be his own man. He also nominated the current Kiwi hero Greg Murphy as another inspiration for him.
“At the end of the day I am my own person. I will base myself off Lowndes, I will base myself off Murph, having a Kiwi attitude as well.
“But what you see is what you get. I will be my own person, I am not going to try and be a different person to who I am and what you see now is what I have been for the last five years.
“Everyone asks ‘is it going to go your head?’ and I couldn’t think of anything worse. I just want to be myself. If I am talking to the media I want to be myself. I am more comfortable being myself than being a press guru or something like that.”
McLaughlin experienced the highs and lows of motorsport during the New Zealand V8 Supercars event last month, the ITM 400 Auckland, where he won the first race and then had his fastest crash ever, when he hit a Pukekohe wall at 205km/h after a steering arm broke.
“From hero to zero,” he joked. “It was definitely character building.”
McLaughlin said he learned much after the race about the benefits of being fan friendly when team owner Rogers got him off his phone in the back of the garage and sent him out to sign autographs.
“Dead-set it made me feel better because a lot of people said ‘bad luck but you’ll be back, awesome drive yesterday’. And it just teaches you that there are other things to life other than having a good day or a bad day.”
McLaughlin works at GRM as a fourth year apprentice sheetmetal fabricator and spent four days post-Pukekohe repairing his #33 Fujitsu Holden Commodore VF for this weekend’s Chill Perth 360 at Barbagallo Raceway.
It is a place McLaughlin looks upon fondly, because he broke through there last year for his first win in the Dunlop development series on his way to winning the title.
“I rate the place, I think it’s a really cool, flowing sort of circuit so I can’t wait to see what it is like,” he said. “I am pumped. I am really looking forward to it. I just want to drive the car!”
McLaughlin stands 10th in the championship after three rounds on 457 points. FPR’s Will Davison leads on 697 points in his Pepsi Max Ford Falcon FG.
