A new V8 star is gunning for his first victory at Timaru this weekend. Hamilton’s Martin Short, just 20, shot to the fore in last weekend’s third round of the BNT New Zealand V8s Championship at Teretonga, near Invercargill.
The former Formula Ford champion, halfway through his second season in V8s, qualified fastest and was on track to post not only his breakthrough first victory but also his first round win as he led the final race by a comfortable margin.
But in wet, very difficult conditions he spun off and dropped to third. That left him third for the round and advanced him to fourth in the championship.
Short said he was confident of showing the same pace at Timaru, mixing it with the top trio of Angus Fogg, Tim Edgell and V8 Supercar driver Jason Bargwanna. All drive Ford Falcons.
“The car is handling very well in the corners and we’ve got a new engine, built by Tony Marsh,” he said. “We didn’t have the budget for rebuilds before.
“We’ve got a race engineer on board, Barry Neale, and he’s really helpful. We didn’t have an engineer last season.”
Short won the Formula Ford championship at the third attempt and then moved straight from the little single-seaters to the big touring cars. Many drivers find this transition difficult because the V8s require an unusual driving style, but Short acclimatised quite quickly.
“I found I could carry a lot of the experience from Formula Fords over to the V8s, though it was a big step up racing guys with a lot of experience,” he said.
“The hardest thing to learn has been contact. In Formula Ford you can’t touch wheels [which causes a crash] but in V8s sometimes you’ve got to hit people if you want to pass them and the cars have equal performance.”
Touching other cars requires finesse – if the contact is severe enough to cause the car in front to go off the circuit, the overtaking driver will be penalised, Short says.
Fogg leads the championship by 53 points from Bargwanna, with Edgell another 95 points back in third after a disappointing weekend at Teretonga.
Meanwhile two young Kiwis lead 15 overseas drivers in the Toyota Racing Series – Invercargill driver Damon Leitch is first and Aucklander Nick Cassidy second after their championship’s opening round at Teretonga.
"It will be great to head to Timaru with the series lead,” Leitch, 18, said. “It won't be easy to hold onto but I can take a lot of confidence from this weekend."
Cassidy, 17, said Teretonga had been a very difficult weekend. “But at least we're leaving the first round in a much stronger [championship] position than we did last year," he added.
Last season Cassidy finished second in the championship, behind Mitch Evans, and he wants to go one better this season to boost his chances of securing a good drive overseas later this year.
All classes have one race on Saturday and two on Sunday.
