Veteran Racer Kenny Smith Rolls Back Years, Odd On For Title

Veteran Racer Kenny Smith Rolls Back the Years And Looks Odds on for International Single Seater Title

When it comes to fast single seater racing cars, you might think of Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel or Scott Dixon in the USA. You might even think of Kiwi young guns Mitch Evans, Richie Stanaway or Brendon Hartley.

But one international title - the Formula 5000 World Series - could head the way of a Kiwi racing driver this weekend at his home circuit Hampton Downs. And he's 72 years young.

Kenny Smith was born on 11 August 1942 and is a New Zealand motor racing legend. Good enough to have made it to Formula One in the sixties and seventies, his most notable successes in the period were wins in the New Zealand Grand Prix in 1976, 1990, and 2004 - but of course they didn't form part of the 'official' F1 World Championship. His career spans no less than seven decades and that is regarded as unique and unrivalled in the whole of world motorsport and at all levels.

In recent years he has focussed on competing in the Australasian Formula 5000 series - a series for V8 powered 5000cc 600 horsepower monsters that rivalled and often surpassed Formula One speeds of their day in the late sixties and seventies. And this weekend at Hampton Downs in the North Waikato, which is playing host to the Formula 5000 World Series as part of the annual Gulf Oil New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing, he can bag an international title in the category.

With three wins from three races over the first weekend, he is in pole position to secure the series title in a field of more than 20 F5000 machines, lapping the North Waikato circuit at outright lap record pace and leaving the younger guys in his wake.

But for Kenny, it's simply another day in the office.

Kenny will practice his Lola F5000 on Friday at 2.15pm, he will qualify it on Saturday morning at 10.00am and will race Saturday at 2.30pm, then twice on Sunday at 10.100am and 2.15pm.

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