Motorsport: Andre Heimgartner joins the Kiwi V8 charge

V8 Supercar drivers will be battling it out on Adelaide's street circuit in the season opener. Photo / Edge Photographics

Super Black driver to tackle Aussie contingent that includes return of Ambrose.

The talking point for fans of V8 Supercars is the return of former two-time series winner (2003, 2004) Marcos Ambrose to the fray. The Tasmanian has been in the US for the past six years, making his way into the top echelon of V8 racing, Nascar.

Closer to home here in New Zealand, local fans will be tuned to the opening round of the 2015 season in Adelaide for the Clipsal 500 to cheer on the Kiwi drivers. No New Zealander has won the V8 Supercars overall title (not including the Australian Touring Car Championship), although Greg Murphy (2002 and 2003) and Shane van Gisbergen (2014) both finished second.

For the past three years there have been three New Zealanders - Fabian Coulthard, Scott McLaughlin and van Gisbergen - taking it to the Aussies and this season a fourth Kiwi enters the mix. Not only is Andre Heimgartner making the step up from the Development Series, he's doing it with a New Zealand owned and based (Wellsford) team - Super Black Racing.

After testing the waters at Bathurst last year, team owner Tony Lentino realised there had to be a Kiwi team in the category and he wanted the young team to have a young driver. After Heimgartner, and co-driver Ant Pedersen, put on a good show at Mount Panorama last year by finishing 11th, Lentino decided to take the plunge and attack a full season of V8 Supercars racing.

Heimgartner is no stranger to the Adelaide street circuit having raced there in the Porsche Carrera Cup series and the Development Series.

"Bathurst was a bit of a warm up, but now at Adelaide it's starting to really feel that I'm in the main game," said Heimgartner.

"All I've got to do is put my best foot forward and see how it goes. I'm really excited to see how it all works out and it's a whole new chapter in my racing career and I can't wait to get started.

"Bathurst was great and helped me a lot, but now it's just me [in the car] - I can't rely on anyone else and that puts a bit more pressure on my shoulders," he said. "Adelaide is one of my better tracks having raced here before, but I'm starting to get a bit nervous. I'll be trying to do what I always do before a race and not try and change how I approach it.

"I'm getting more and more comfortable in the car and all the laps in testing have helped as well. They are different to the development [series] car, but in the end a car is a car. They do [V8 Supercars] a few different weird and funky things, which makes it interesting.

"The team is excited and everything is working well with Prodrive Racing Australia. A lot more people at Super Black Racing have put in more work than I have and I think everyone's looking forward to the season."

Coulthard had a great start to his season in 2014 but fell away mid season and struggled to get back in touch with the leaders. The slate is now clean and he's keen to get off to a solid start.

"I'm looking forward to practice at Adelaide," he said. "We'll have a better understanding of what we've done to the car since last year.

"I've got confidence in my guys and that we can be consistently on the podium this year. In that aspect I couldn't be happier and the changes and hopefully the engineering restructure at BJR will assist in getting better performance. A good start [to the season] will set the rest of the season up."

McLaughlin shook the category up with his hard-charging style in the bright blue Volvo and rattled the cages of a few of the more established drivers. With a bit of time to tweak the new car during the off-season, the 21-year-old has his tail feathers up.

"I'm pretty excited about getting out there this weekend and I just want to do it all now," he said. "We've done a little bit to the car [off-season] but not much really. The car should be really good and, touch wood, we've got on top of some of the issues we had last year."

Van Gisbergen (see full interview in Driven) is in his third season with Tekno Autosports and reckons this could be his year to push on.

There are two 125km races today and a 250km event tomorrow afternoon Adelaide time.