Motorsport: Richie Stanaway commands attention

Richie Stanaway is already a dominant figure in Formula Three racing. Photo / Supplied

The Toyota Racing Series ended with a flourish last weekend at Manfeild, with the 57th running of the New Zealand Grand Prix.

As reported in the New Zealand Herald on Monday, Mitch Evans was unable to defend his NZGP title and TRS champion Nick Cassidy is the new name on the trophy.

At the weekend's event was another Kiwi, Richie Stanaway, who has a growing reputation in the motorsport world and who came to Driven's notice a few years ago.

Fresh out of the junior open-wheel classes, Stanaway made people sit up and notice at the Australian V8 Supercars round at Hamilton in 2009.

Back then, Stanaway, 20, had only seen the inside of a TRS car at a test at Taupo, three days before the V8 Supercar meeting, but still promptly put the car on pole for both races. Proving that was no fluke, he romped away to win both races over the weekend.

Stanaway then headed to Europe and in the past two years has won the German ADAC and Formula Three championships as a rookie by hefty margins. Driven caught up with him at Manfeild.

Your two from two as a championship-winning rookie, can you tell us what the secret is?

I think because I've only been racing in national championships for the past two years they haven't been the most competitive European championships I have been driving in.

However, it's been a good opportunity for me to go over there and race and I've learned a lot and been fortunate to have been dominant over the two seasons.

Do you think this year, now that you're doing a full season in Formula Renault 3.5 litre, will be a lot tougher?

This year is going to be a huge step up, in terms of the level of competition, as this year it's a European championships rather than a national championships.

That's the reason my management put me in the last two GP3 races: to see how I would go at a higher level of competition.

Halfway through the German series, we realised I was doing almost too well and they wanted to put me in GP3 to see how well I would go.

It's three levels down [from Formula One] and they wanted to see if I had what it takes to race against those guys.

You didn't do too badly, especially in winning your first race.

I had a good run in Spa. Monza was a bit of a disappointment but at least it was a chance for me to race in a really competitive class. It was good to win a race in that fist weekend as it proved I could be as good as the others and mix it with those top European guys. Now this year I'll be doing full championship with Gravity.

You signed up with Gravity, whose chairman is Eric Bullier, the Lotus Renault F1 team principal. Would it be fair to say that you might be being groomed for future Formula One duties?

My new team is pretty much the junior driver development team for the F1 team and is being relaunched at the end of this month to be even more associated with the F1 team. I was hoping to get a reserve drive this year but they had someone else doing it and they didn't want to rush me too quickly as I hadn't proved myself in a top European championship just yet.

But there has already been mentions that I will get to do some F1 testing this year and it's quite likely I'll be doing some end-of-year testing at Abu Dhabi in November, provided I have a solid season this year.

You've always been able to go quick straight away in whatever car you're put in. Would it be fair to say you don't over-analyse what you are doing or what the car is doing? Is it more intuitive and on feel?

I think half of it is intuition and feeling and then there's the other half of analysing the details and the data. I'll admit sometimes though, I do arrive at a new circuit without looking into the data too much and just trusting more on how I feel when I drive the car rather than just thinking numbers and lines in my head.

I do analyse things when it comes to the finer details but in terms of getting up to speed straight away I just use my intuition.