Motorsport: Kiwi rally driver gets major boost in pursuit of his dream

Job Quantock and co-driver Alan Steel in the Hyundai AP4 car. Photo / Supplied

Young Kiwi rally driver Job Quantock has just been given a major boost in his dream of becoming a professional driver.

The 22-year-old from Canterbury has won the Hyundai NZ Young Driver Shootout and Scholarship, which sees him get to contest two rounds of the New Zealand Rally Championship next season in the Hyundai New Zealand-prepared i20 AP4 car.

"It is huge," he tells herald.co.nz. "It doesn't get any better than that at this stage.

"We have never competed in the New Zealand Championship - last year we competed in the Mainland series which is the South Island series."

Quantock admits the best he could have hoped for without the scholarship would be to enter the South Island rounds of the championship but now he's hoping to do more.

"We would have still competed in the South Islands rounds because it is a lot easy to get to but the financial hurdle of getting to the North Islands rounds - this will make it a lot easier now.

"We have still got our car [a Mitsubishi Evo VII] that we ran last season. At the moment we are trying to put together a budget to get to as many rounds as possible even outside the South Island rounds."

On top of getting to drive a state-of-the-art car in two of the six rounds in the championship next season there are a number of other benefits that Quantock gets from beating out four other young drivers to win the Hyundai initiative.

"There is a lot of support from Hyundai and the Pinnacle Programme now and also from Hayden [Kiwi WRC star Hayden Paddon] himself just nudging us in the right direction and all the little things like tips and advice that we will gain from being affiliated to him."

Quantock, along with the other four scholarship contenders, got to get behind the wheel of the Hyundai i20 at the Maramarua Forest over the weekend.

"We had our first test of the new car in the forest with Hayden on Saturday. We had three runs in the car - one taking it easy and then two at race pace.

"It was amazing. Words can't really describe how well-built that car is.

"It is a huge step up from where we are at the moment.

"The next generation of cars in New Zealand is amazing and that is a top machine."

Hyundai have hinted at possibly expanding from a one-car operation in 2017 to two cars the following year and the plan for Quantock is to get himself a full championship drive in 2018.

"That is the big dream plan to have the full season the following year in one of those cars.

"The plan or dream now is to win the New Zealand Championship to start with and then make our way up to where Hayden is now.

"This is the best path possible to get there at the moment."