When British driver Lando Norris clinched the F1 World Championship at Abu Dhabi on Monday (NZT), he became the tenth Formula 1 World Champion to have raced at Teretonga Park in Invercargill. It is an unsurpassed record of world-class sports stars coming to our region which dates back to the early days of the circuit.
In those early days, F1 drivers used to spend summer racing in New Zealand and Australia. World Champions to come to our city were Jack Brabham and Jackie Stewart, both three-time champs, two-time champions Jim Clark and Graham Hill, plus American Phil Hill, John Surtees (also a seven-time World Motorcycle Champion), Kiwi Denny Hulme and Austrian Jochen Rindt. It wasn’t just World Champions either. It was all the big names of the day, including Stirling Moss, Bruce McLaren and many more.
At the end of the 1960s, Formula 1 became more commercial and the days of superstars racing in the Antipodes in the offseason ended. It did not mean the end of seeing some of the best though. In 1977 and 1978, Finnish driver Keke Rosberg raced here before going on to become World Champion in 1982. Now Norris, who raced here in 2016 and won the Spirit Of A Nation Trophy, is the tenth World F1 Champion to have graced Teretonga Park.
Only thirty-five different drivers have won the World Championship in its 75-year history, so that is a healthy percentage that have raced here. The ten account for sixteen World Championship titles.
It is not only F1 champions but also Indianapolis 500 and Le Mans 24 Hour winners that have raced at the circuit operated by the Southland Sports Car Club.
On the grid alongside Norris in Abu Dhabi were others to have come to Teretonga Park — Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda, Franco Colapinto and Lance Stroll. Next year, Arvid Lindblad, a winner at Teretonga Park less than a year ago, will also join the F1 grid.
Awaiting us over January 24-25 is more of the same when the Castrol Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Trophy Series visits us. With it will come a field of up-and-coming international racing drivers all vying to follow in the wheel tracks of Norris and others.
Already, drivers from Ireland, Japan, Sri Lanka, China, Australia, Great Britain, the United States and, of course, New Zealand are entered and adding to the star power of the grid is a Finnish driver who is already a World Champion, in fact a two-time one in rallying. At just twenty-five years of age, Kalle Rovanpera has retired from rallying to pursue a single-seater journey which he hopes will take him to the top of that discipline.
If you are trackside at Teretonga Park over the weekend when the Repco NextGen NZ Championship brings the Ascot Park Hotel Teretonga International meeting to our circuit, you could just be watching another future World Champion.
By Lindsay Beer
