Kiwi Motocross world champion Courtney Duncan puts injury and misfortune behind her to finally be crowned world champion in 2019
COMMENT:
Last year was a great one for New Zealanders in motorsport.
It was maybe not quite up there with some of the years of the 1960s, when Kiwis were taking on the best Formula One, Can Am and Le Mans drivers, but it produced some damn good results.
Tryingto rank drivers is a subjective exercise and everyone will have a different opinion, often predicated by what category of motorsport they favour.
A good benchmark for determining the best of the best is winning a world championship.
There are only five official FIA world titles available: Formula One, World Rally Championship, World Endurance Championship, World Rallycross Championship and Karting World Championship.
For the two-wheel brigade, the FIM have a few more: MotoGP, motocross, endurance, superbike, speedway, sidecar, MotoE and some others.
Using the two globally-sanctioned categories, New Zealand's best and brightest star of 2019 was Courtney Duncan. Yes, others in the motorsport arena won big international titles but they were country-based, albeit with a global audience.
Courtney Duncan poses with her bike before the opening round of the Women's Motocross World Championship. Photo / Photosport
Not to take anything away from anyone's efforts in 2019, from clubman race winners all the way to Japanese, American and Australian category champions, but Duncan won the women's motocross world title against the best on the planet.
There has been much said about Scott McLaughlin's second Supercars title — and some of the machinations surrounding it — and how he overcame the disappointment of missing out in 2017, showing great mental strength to win the following year. And then to really make the point by smashing the field in 2019.
Duncan, though, had to endure three hard years when she was leading the championship each year only for the rug to be wrenched from under her.
In her first campaign, Duncan was leading the title race when a photographer decided to take pictures in a landing zone and was hit by Duncan in a season-ending crash.
In 2017, while on track to win the title, Duncan swerved to miss fallen riders and smashed into a fence. She could finish only sixth in that race, missing top spot by two points.
In 2018, a foot injury ruined her tilt at the title, forcing her out of the final two rounds while holding a 21-point advantage. Both those years, she finished with the most race wins (four out of 12 in 2017 and five out of 15 in 2018) but placed third and fourth overall.
Try to imagine the incredible inner fortitude to keep heading back to Europe with little support to try again and again and again.
In 2019, her perseverance was rewarded with her first world title, winning 13 of the 15 races.
Another Kiwi worthy of an honourable mention is Nick Cassidy. The 25-year-old is probably New Zealand's most underrated driver.
It's a shame, as he's the only foreign driver with the trifecta of Japanese national motorsport titles: Japanese F3, Super GT and Super Formula.
There are no bunnies in any of those three categories, and to make another point, he's a rare racer who not only contested tin tops and open wheelers in the same year, but also won in both.
Earl Bamber is another who lets his driving do the talking. The Asia-based Kiwi picked up yet another international title, this time the American IMSA SportsCar Championship, as well as finishing third in the FIA GT World Cup.
Branching out from sitting behind the wheel and winning races, Bamber took his own team to Bathurst for the 12-Hour and as a team principle gave Porsche their first win there.
Others to let the world know that New Zealand will take on all-comers in the motorsport arena were the perennial IndyCar championship threat Scott Dixon, Mitch Evans in Formula E, youngsters Liam Lawson and Marcus Armstrong in FIA Formula 3, Supercars front-runner Shane van Gisbergen and most-improved Andre Heimgartner.
And let's not forget former Formula One driver Brendon Hartley, who has transitioned back into the World Endurance Championship like he was never away and sits second after three races.
