White Impresses At Bathurst

Christchurch motorsport star Chris White – Rookie winner in the 2024-2025 Bridgestone GR86 Championship – made his Bathurst debut over the weekend on the support bill for the Bathurst 1000 – and says he enjoyed every minute of the experience.

Chris won his drive in the third round of the 2025 Toyota Australia GR Cup thanks to his rookie successes in NZ and headed to the world famous event hoping to make steady progress over the weekend’s practice sessions, qualifying and three races.

A huge crash in the weekend’s first race ended any chance Chris had of progressing from his 26th spot on the grid, but he made big strides over the course of the two remaining races.

In the second race he moved forward to 22nd and in the final race on Sunday really got into the groove and made solid progress to 14th at the flag.

“We had set out to find the pace to be in or just outside the top ten within the three races so in the end getting to 14th with only two races was pretty satisfying,” he added.

“We actually had plenty of pace in the last race based on what we had learned in race two so I’m pretty confident had we been able to run three races we would have found even more pace for that final race on Sunday morning before the 1000km.”

With just a couple of weeks to go until the New Zealand season kicks off at Hampton Downs, the dream weekend at Mount Panorama provided a great opportunity to blow out any cobwebs.

“It was great to be out there racing, it’s certainly slightly different to the NZ championship as the field in Australia is bigger, the cars run on different tyres and it’s very much cut and thrust and elbows out stuff on track. I enjoyed every second of the experience.

But that’s good learning for me and I’ve certainly learned a bit more about tyre management which I will take into the Bridgestone GR86 Championship this season.”

Chris won’t have long to wait before he’s back behind the wheel, the young gun teaming up with new-to-the-championship team Neale Motorsport as he aims to back up his Rookie of the Year season in 2024-25 with a title challenge this season.

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