Piquet wins race two, round two of Toyota Racing Series

24 January 2016  /   Series Development

Piquet-wins-race-two,-round-two-of-Toyota-Racing-Series

Pedro Piquet of Brazil, the 17-year old son of multiple F1 champion Nelson Piquet, has comfortably won the second race in round two of the Toyota Racing Series at Teretonga Park in Invercargill, marking his first international win.

This is Piquet’s second appearance at the Toyota Racing Series and his knowledge of the smooth Southland track paid dividends today.

Starting from pole position Piquet hung on to his lead for each of the fifteen laps.

Three-time Formula One champion and successful Brazilian businessman, Nelson Piquet is at Teretonga Park supporting his son’s TRS programme and commented yesterday that the race team structure and cars themselves have changed a lot since his days racing.

“I think you can compare these here [pointing to M2 Competition’s Toyota FT50s] like F1 in my time.

“Maybe it was a little but more, you know, but it was the same thing.  Same organisation and the technology is coming more and more and the car is getting more sophisticated and more difficult to work with the one or two mechanics so you need a lot more people,” said Nelson Piquet.   

In the second half of the race Lando Norris (16, UK) was cutting faster times and gaining ground on Piquet but the Brazilian kept a cool head and defended his car-length lead to hang on to the win. 

Russian racer, Artem Markelov (21) claimed third ahead of local driver Brendon Leitch (20) who did well to climb to third from fifth early in the race.   

The winner from race one yesterday, India’s Jehan Daruvala (19), could only manage fifth but kept pace under the 54 seconds barrier along with Guanyu Zhou (16, China).
The two other Kiwi racers, Canterbury’s James Munro (18) and Pukekohe local Taylor Cockerton (18) finished 10th and 12th respectively.

Lando Norris has pole for the feature race this afternoon where the drivers will vie for the Spirit of a Nation Cup, won last year by local Invercargill racer Brendon Leitch.

Toyota Racing Series, Race #2 Results (Top 10 only):

  1. P Piquet (Brazil) 53.528 (secs)
  2. L Norris (UK) 53.391
  3. A Markelov (Russia) 53.792
  4. B Leitch (New Zealand) 53.851
  5. J Daruvala (India) 53.914
  6. G Zhou (China) 53.728
  7. N Dapero (Argentina) 54.123
  8. F Habsburg (Austria) 54.078
  9. W Owen (USA) 54.252
  10. A Munro (New Zealand) 54.155

TRS Schedule for this afternoon, Sunday 24 January 2016:
3pm: Race #3, round two Toyota Racing Series – Spirit of a Nation Cup, Teretonga Park, Invercargill