Racing from Manfeild to Monaco has taken Tauranga's Richie Stanaway exactly five years.
In 2007 the Bethlehem College student, then 15, won the annual SpeedSport scholarship at the Feilding circuit and earned himself a year-long fully-funded season racing in the New Zealand Formula First championship.
This weekend while another cropof hopefuls contest the 12th edition of the scholarship shootout looking to kickstart their racing careers, Stanaway's meteoric rise through the ranks of international motor racing takes him to the glamorous but exacting barrier-lined streets of Monte Carlo.
Having won New Zealand Formula Ford and the German Formel Master and Formula 3 titles, Stanaway, 20, is chasing success in the World Series by Renault category which is a support class to this weekend's Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
"It's difficult to believe that I will be racing in Monaco. It's such a brilliant place and for years I've watched the F1 races on TV, so to be racing there this weekend will be incredible," said Stanaway.
It's the second of the nine rounds of the 2012 World Series by Renault and since 2005 the race round the tight streets of the principality has been the highlight of the WSR calendar and also slightly different in format to other rounds of WSR.
The drivers had only one 45-minute practice session to learn the track last night (NZ time). After a free day today, the action continues with qualifying tomorrow split into two groups and unlike other WSR events there is just one race on Sunday (evening NZ time).
"It's my first time there obviously, so the aim is to get up to speed as quickly as possible and qualify strongly in order to have a good race," said Stanaway.
Getting up to speed has been something Stanaway excelled at in pre-season WSR testing but the opening round at Aragon in Spain saw him stranded on the grid with an electrical glitch and hit by another competitor before his car had moved.
In race two he finished sixth and is 11th equal in the Driver's championship standings.
Stanaway drives for the Czech Republic-based Lotus WSR team with Denmark's Marco Sorensen as his team-mate. Sorensen was comfortably leading race two at Aragon when an electronics problem struck his car.
Both Lotus drivers want to put in a great performance on the streets of Monaco aware that four out of six different past winners of the WSR race - Pastor Maldonado (Williams), Charles Pic (Marussia), Oliver Turvey (McLaren test driver) and Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) - are now active in Formula 1. A win in Monaco means another step towards the pinnacle of motorsport.
