Motorsport: Young guns owe much to elite academy

Tom Blomqvist, Formula Renault UK single-seater champion. Photo / Supplied

For seven years, the Elite Motorsport Academy must have been the best-kept secret in New Zealand. The week-long intensive camp, held in Dunedin, is for the best and brightest new circuit and rally drivers.

Flying under the radar, it has produced drivers of the calibre of Formula One super licence holder Brendon Hartley and Hayden Paddon, who is competing in selected rounds of the Production World Rally Championship.

There is a whole new bunch of graduates plying their trade in Europe at the moment, winning championships and testing for various international series.

Here are the new crop of Kiwi open wheel racing rising stars making the motor racing world sit up and take notice.

Earl Bamber
Winner of the 2010 New Zealand Grand Prix and former A1GP driver, Bamber has recently been employed as a TV commentator for the Superleague Formula series. The 20-year-old was offered a last-minute opportunity to drive for the FC Porto team at Ordos, China, when their original driver was unable to obtain a visa. Bamber came out on top at the end of the five-lap sprint race, winning $186,000.

On the back of that result, Bamber was offered a drive for the PSV Eindhoven team in Beijing the following weekend. He again showed he could mix it with the best from Europe, bagging another $186,000.

Tom Blomqvist
At just 16, Great Britain's latest Formula Renault UK single-seater champion has become the youngest driver to win the series - and beats previous winner Lewis Hamilton by two years.

Though born in Britain in 1993, Blomqvist lived - and got his start in motorsport in karts - in Auckland from 2000 and travels on a New Zealand passport.

At 15 he was, technically, too young to race in the Formula Renault UK series, but a dispensation was arranged so he could do a test campaign in the 2009 winter series. He proved he was no mug, setting lap records on the way to race wins.

On the back of the title win, Blomqvist has been short-listed for the McLaren Autosport BRDC award, and signed deal with a Paris management group.

Richie Stanaway
The youngster from Tauranga has just finished an official test in a Formula Renault 2.0 at Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, as a reward for comprehensively winning the ADAC Formel Masters championship in Germany. He won the title with a round to spare, collecting 12 victories along the way.

He made people sit up and take notice at last year's Hamilton round of the Australian V8 Supercar series. Fresh from his rookie Formula Ford championship-winning season, he put a few noses out of joint when he won the Toyota Racing Series race in his first time out in the car.

A young man in demand, Stanaway has also recently tested with a front-running German Formula 3 team and was quickly up to speed, setting the quickest lap time right from the first morning session and the fastest lap time in every session all day.

Mitch Evans
The 16-year-old Aucklander won his opportunity to test in the Renault Sport European driver evaluation test by winning the 2010 Toyota Racing Series. Evans became the youngest to win the series at 15 and he was also the International Series Champion and rookie of the year.

In 2009 Evans competed in the Australian Formula Ford Championship and in finishing second became the highest-placed rookie.

Along the way Evan became the youngest driver ever to be on the podium, to get pole position, and to win a national Australian race. He finished second in the championship and was rookie of the year.

He is second in the Australian Formula 3 championship with two rounds to go and after his Renault test moved to Portugal to take part in three days of GP3 testing at Estoril.

On a final note, fellow Kiwi Brendon Hartley, after being released from the Red Bull Racing junior development squad, only contested six of the nine World Series by Renault (WSR) rounds and finished 10th at the end of the season.

He was also in Spain testing WSR with P1 Motorsport and ended the final day at the top of the timesheets.