16-year-old Team Kiwi Racing driver heads to F1 event

16-year-old Team Kiwi Racing driver heads to F1 event

Auckland teen Andre` Heimgartner will this weekend race the all black #21 Team Kiwi Racing Porsche 997 on the Melbourne Formula One circuit in the City Index Carrera Cup second round, being contested 16-18 March.

A support category to the opening round of the 2012 Formula One championship, Heimgartner is looking forward to the challenge ahead having recorded a pair of fourth place finishes on debut in the series opening races at Adelaide earlier this month. The St Kentigern student will again put his school books aside to travel to Australia and race the TKR Porsche with his follow Team Kiwi Racing team mates Todd Bickerton and Ian McNabb, who are the engineers on the car.

“I know it will be harder this weekend at the Melbourne Grand Prix with the addition of Mark Skaife, Johnny Reid and ex F1 driver Heinz-Harald Frentzen to the category. They are all amazing drivers with so much experience, the difference between first and sixth will be so close – I just hope to be in there somewhere,” said Heimgartner.

“Our engineer Todd Bickerton has highlighted a few simple points I can use to improve my lap times which hopefully means I can lift my game to see how I measure against them.

“And also to continue with the Team Kiwi opportunity is pretty amazing as three months ago I would never have thought I would be in a position to race competitively against names known world-wide. So I have to thank David John for having the faith in letting me as a 16-year-old drive the TKR car, and my parents for getting all the details sorted to allow me time off school for this opportunity.”

Team Principal David John says this weekend will be another challenge for the young driver who has an increase in competition to add to the accelerated learning he is experiencing.

“We’ve certainly made plenty of headway in terms of car knowledge and how Andre` can perform even better. Now we’ve got a number of smaller things to focus on this time rather than what we went through at the opening round of the championship in Adelaide. That’s largely thanks to the quality crew we have working on this project and the input from Craig Baird who is helping to mentor Andre,” said the TKR boss.

“We’ve got credible results on the board from the first round at Adelaide, so it’s much easier to now focus in more detail on the areas we can see we need to improve and move in the direction Team Kiwi was established to achieve. It’s been a good start to this year’s campaign and although Andre` has extra competition this weekend I’m confident he can perform well ahead of what’d you’d expect of a 16-year-old.”

Team Kiwi Racing (TKR) gets a first practise around the 5.28km circuit of 16 turns on the Thursday afternoon, followed two hours later by qualifying. The weekend’s first of three races start late Friday with a race mid Saturday and the final held early Sunday afternoon, three hours before the Formula One Grand Prix begins.

The Team Kiwi driver is currently fifth in the standings on 95 points, after the first of eight rounds.

ENDS

© Scoop Media