Toyota New Zealand made a long term commitment to support Toyota Racing Series (TRS) back in 2005. The series has now completed nine successful seasons.
Starting with the aspiration to promote and grow single-seater racing in New Zealand, TRS is now a major motorsport series with National Championship along with other premier events, such as the New Zealand Grand Prix.
In addition to technological breakthroughs, the biggest success story of the series is the training ground it offers young drivers as they aspire for seemingly impossible seats on the international circuit. At Toyota we believe if you can dream it you can do it, and we’ve seen this in so many TRS participants.
Barrie Thomlinson, category manager for the Toyota Racing Series says, “It is particularly rewarding to see some of these young drivers progress in their careers knowing we have had some part to play in their success. At just 15 years of age Brendon Hartley from Palmerston North won the very first TRS race at Timaru in 2005. His performance secured him a test with the Red Bull Junior Driver Development squad, and he went on to win the European Formula Renault Championship in his first season”.
Mr Thomlinson also believes New Zealand’s southern hemisphere location provides international drivers the perfect opportunity to race in their off-season.
“Our fields are very competitive and our local talent pool is deep. This and the relevance of this formula to European formula has drawn drivers from all over the world; countries represented include Australia, USA, Britain, Italy, Bahrain, Ireland, Hong Kong, and Denmark”.
New Zealand has a proud history of producing top single seater drivers, from our trio of Formula One drivers: Chris Amon, Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme in the 60s and 70s.
In addition to Brendon Hartley, we can also boast some young emerging stars; Mitch Evans and Nick Cassidy have all raced in the Toyota Racing Series and are now winning races internationally.
Barrie Thomlinson says, “We have seen several of our young drivers join the series from junior categories and show their talent in the more powerful and technically challenging TRS cars”.
At Toyota we thrive on technology being in a perpetual state of change, and continuously improve by pushing technological boundaries. It makes sense to align ourselves with an event like TRS that does the same.
Moving into the seventh season, an exciting development for TRS has been the introduction in 2007of our 85% ethanol blend fuel - an output of the dairy industry and a sustainable energy source. Ethanol fuel (E85) has given power and torque improvements and increased performance throughout the power range, while delivering overall environmental benefits.
By utilising lightweight components and the latest developments in aerodynamics and chassis design the TRS cars are faster around a race circuit than a V8 Supercar, but they use a fraction of the fuel that V8s use.
At Toyota we understand the necessity to make a real effort to reduce the environmental impact of our actions, which naturally must include motorsport activities. Through the use of E85 and other fuel-saving advances, TRS is arguably the most sustainable motorsport on the planet. In fact, we have even managed to reduce the total footprint of the series by using E85 to offset carbon emissions from the series since 2008. Ex-Formula One driver, Chris Amon, supports the move to E85 and says he can see Toyota leading the way.
Find out more about the Toyota Racing Series:
www.toyotaracing.co.nz
www.facebook.com/toyotaracing
