KEY POINTS:
Edoardo Piscopo, a 19-year-old Italian, is the latest young foreign driver to chase some of New Zealand's most coveted motor-racing trophies.
Piscopo, who will race in Red Bull colours, will make his debut at the wheel of a Toyota single-seater in the Lady Wigram Trophy meeting at Ruapuna
next weekend.
Also in the field will be Englishman Ben Clucas (who has already won the Denny Hulme Memorial Trophy and the New Zealand Motor Cup) and Hamad Al Fardan from Bahrain, who is the reigning New Zealand Grand Prix champion.
The Ruapuna meeting is the start of the three-round international segment of the Toyota championship that also includes rounds at Taupo and Manfeild. With the New Zealand V8s absent, the top single-seater series has star billing.
Piscopo is a member of the Red Bull Junior Development Squad that also includes Palmerston North teenager Brendon Hartley.
Because the final race of the last round, also at Ruapuna, was cancelled, the Toyotas will have four races next weekend.
The last of these will be for the Lady Wigram Trophy.
For more than 50 years the trophy, originally contested on the Wigram airfield, has been one of the most highly sought in New Zealand. It has been won by some of the greatest names in world motorsport.
Jim Clark won it three times (1965, 1967 and 1968), Bruce McLaren twice (1963, 1964), Jack Brabham twice (1960, 1961), and Stirling Moss (1962) and Jackie Stewart (1966) once each.
Of the locally-based drivers, Graham McRae won four times (1971, 1972, 1973, 1975), Craig Baird three times (1990, 1992, 1993), Dave McMillan twice (1979, 1978) and Paul Radisich once (1987).
Most remarkable of all is Ken Smith, who will be competing next weekend and who won the trophy in 1976 in a Lola Formula 5000 car and again in 1991 in a Formula Pacific.
The trophy has not always been at stake in recent years but it was on offer when the Australian Formula Three cars had a one-off meeting in 2004. Aucklander Daniel Gaunt won that race and he is back again as defending Toyota champion with an 82-point lead over Wellington's Ben Harford in this season's series.
Missing is last season's Lady Wigram Trophy winner, Matthew Hamilton. The Christchurch driver won all three races last season but an aborted season of racing in the United States has left him, his backers and Dave McMillan's team in the US out of pocket.
Gaunt, who also raced in the United States this year, must be favourite to win the trophy but local driver Andy Knight is always a force at Ruapuna and Clucas and Al Fardan were on the podium in the earlier Christchurch round.
Joining the field will be Nelson Hartley (Brendon Hartley's brother) and Mark Munro, who missed the first two rounds after a testing crash at Pukekohe.
Also on the weekend's programme will be races for Porsches and the V8 development series.