Kiwi Motorsport is riding a global high currently. It warrants the attention it gets not just now but for the decades past and the many to come. It’s part of our heritage and culture and while other sports codes perhaps at times have more profile one should never under estimate just what our athletes in this sport are achieving.
One only has to look at almost any form of motorsport globally and there is a kiwi behind a wheel or behind the scenes. With New Zealanders in high profile teams or positions in WEC, European Rally, NASCAR, Formula E, IMSA, INDYCAR and INDY NXT along with the USF Pro series plus respective Porsche classes in the U.S, Asia and Australia, British F4 and GB3 classes, Supercar and of course the rise of Liam Lawson on the F1 stage.
This new generation of growth has been spanning several years now and the domestic surge is clearly there as well with more future stars in the wind as a result of New Zealand’s feeder classes to the sport and the efforts of many corporate backers via scholarships and of course the Motorsport New Zealand Elite academy program.
Recently, Motorsport Producer David Turner caught up with one of those future stars Ayrton Hodson of Tauranga, who is very much part of the next generation of talent.
Turner: Ayrton great to catch up again back in NZ and congratulations, this is actually your two-year anniversary! Two years this week since you first hit the tarseal and also drove a Sprintcar as well.
Take us back though those 2 years and explain what it was like to not only venture into the world of circuit racing with NO experience what so ever but to at the same time continue your Speedway growth with your first season in the powerful beasts that are Sprint cars.
Hodson: Yes, it’s pretty surreal to think that its only just two years now, bit of a whirlwind period but I am enjoying every second of it.
To have no karting background or tarmac experience it was a massive moment to make that last minute call to enter the Toyota 86 championship back then which in effect has kick started this whole journey.
When you are up against guys that have been in there for years and even the young guys like Brock Gilchrist who was starting his 6th year in the championship it’s always going to be an uphill battle to get on par with them but I love that kind of challenge.
I don’t have any major financial backers but my family have worked so hard to ensure we are where we are. It was a huge credit to everyone around us that we could make that TR86 season happen back then and a massive moment. One week we’re making final preparations for my foray into Sprintcars at BayPark Speedway and then the next minute we’re at Hampton Downs figuring out that tarmac stuff.
That first year in the Sprintcar was something else and Baypark provides some very tough local competition and the racing there due to the size of the track is intense and full on, that’s for sure. I had pretty good pace straight away and as a result probably found I got into places I really wasn’t planning to be or expecting early on.
Night one at BayPark was not to be forgotten moment when I got a bit crossed up, stood on the gas and gently rolled her over but hey that’s speedway.
Turner: – “I know sometimes you feel you have slipped off the NZ radar by making the massive step to base yourself in Australia this past season with McElrea Racing in the Porsche series but this has clearly shown your other talent and that’s in a car on tarmac and still all within these first two years.”
Hodson: Yes, it’s pretty easy when you are over there to think you are missing opportunities back here. I have been very lucky to drive a number of very different and cool race cars in the past two years and to meet some incredible people along the way. To experience BMW, Mercedes and ultimately two types of Porsche is simply awesome. I even got my chance to try the Toyota FT60 Single Seater late last year.
Liam Sceats was there the same day fresh from a season in Japan and we were only half a second off him so I was really happy with that having never even sat in a wings and slicks car before that.
As a family team we took a look at the Toyota CTFROC series for this summer but financially it is just beyond us at this point in time but to have had that small taste and experience a single seater was great.
I would have done a few rounds of the NIERDC series this past winter but the ‘elite’ rule prevented us from competing in one of the Mark Petch owned cars.
At that time of the year when we looked at it, I had done 3 rounds of the Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge in Australia and that’s changed my driver status apparently.
I’m not sure what the dictionary says in terms of a definition for ‘Elite’ but in my book that doesn’t make me any different to any of the guys who ran the whole summer series back here in Gen 2 Porsches. It came down to one of those things and at the end of the day the rules are the rules but we came back the following month and thrashed the Gen 1 Porsche around for 3 hours taking class honours at Hampton Downs.
Hopefully it is something people can look at though as a few rounds in Australia, 18 months into your tarmac career shouldn’t see you classed as Elite and banned from events back here. We should try to have our young talent racing back here at every opportunity.
Turner – Actually take us through that – the Gen 1 Porsche vs. Gen 2 Porsche.
Hodson: We had a Porsche Gen 1 car that we did a few rounds of SIERDC last year (2023) and then the first round at Taupo in November of Super Sprint Championship in the SummerSet GT series last summer.
It was a cool race with a bit of everything and a great battle with Rick Armstrong in his newer car but the conditions really made it a leveller and it was a fun great battle, made for some great telly that day as well.
We ran the Gen 1 with ABS off to try and prep ourselves for the Porsche Michelin Sprint Challenge in Australia this year just to try and get a bit of a feel for how the car would behave.
It wasn’t until I got to Australia in February that I realized how different the Gen 1 and Gen 2 991’s were. Not that one is better than the other, but they are very different. I felt I was a little behind the eight ball with most of the other drivers in the series in their 2nd or 3rd season and the likes of Clay Osborne was there having done the final 2 rounds last year followed by a whole summer in NZ in a Gen 2 car.
Turner: How has the Australian year been and I see you managed to align with a Kiwi team.
The entire team at McElrea Racing whom I drove for this season have been awesome in teaching me and looking ahead at areas of improvement and more, they certainly know the game and it’s been a super time with them. I’ve been really lucky to have Mark Wood’s support at every test or event this year. As an ex-McLaren guy there’s not much he doesn’t know and I am very lucky to have him in my corner.
The big thing over there was to have faith in myself, box on with the learnings and adapt, whilst at the same time living away from home, trying to secure sponsorship and constantly improving my fitness. It was tough initially but I have improved all year, I do my best with what we have available and I try hard to bring it home straight.
It’s quite funny in a way as to how much people hold up Supercars as this holy grail of racing even more so in Australia but the thing to put in perspective the 991.2 on average is not a lot slower than a Gen 3 Supercar so there really is not much in it. I think at Townsville our race pace was in the 1M 16sec and the V8’s were 1M15sec so if anyone thinks the Porsche racing is a toned-down class, they are far from right on that. No we don’t run ABS or traction control in PMSC. I think we’ve been to 3 tracks now where I have seen 265+ on the dash – good times!
Turner – And in between everything else you did quite a bit off track as well and as a Trustee of the Motorsport Elite Academy I guess I have to mention this.
Hodson: – Yes along with everything else in the last 2 years I also worked my way through the last completed year of the New Zealand Elite Motorsport Academy programme. I have written elsewhere that it is just a super programme and I can’t imagine what Australia would have been like this year if I had not been part of that programme. It got me set up for the season in so many ways that I don’t feel I would have been otherwise, Plus it was an amazing honour in May to be the top scholar for the year and take the title for 2023 and my name on the top of my class year on the Ian Snellgrove Trophy.
I don’t have any formal experienced driver management folk around me so the things I learnt through the academy have been invaluable. It was a real honour to take the Ian Snellgrove Trophy home at the end of the programme and I hope in years to come I might be able to visit back there and contribute in some small way to a future Elite Academy class.
Turner – For those from the tarmac side talk us through the aspect of the Sprint car. What makes them enjoyable to drive?
Hodson – Well they do all the talking when you are driving them that’s for sure. There’s a pretty big spread across the field at say Baypark but anywhere from 700 to 900 horsepower and a minimum weight of 660kg’s and a very different driving position.
Again in keeping things in perspective I think we have done something like just twenty shows in our Sprint car career total ‘laughs’.
We’ve had some shockers (Skinny Colson my mentor and I call it learning) and we’ve had some really awesome nights as well. Skinny has been a great coach on the dirt side and after so many years behind the wheel he’s been a great asset to me in all aspects of my racing.
Some guys in New Zealand will never get a heat or feature win and that’s just how classy the kiwi guys are in Speedway and very often so under rated. We’ve had multiple wins now and it’s awesome to have that monkey off your back. If you have 30 cars at a meeting here there’s generally at least a genuine dozen cars that are all easily capable of taking the feature win on any given night so it’s very intense and full on.
It’s tough and after just the twenty odd shows we still have a lot to learn! I enjoy it a lot and man it keeps you sharp.
Turner – There has been a lot of focus on your return this year, feeling the pressure?
People seem to have some pretty high expectations and that’s fine but hell you have to keep things in perspective a little. We are years and thousands of races behind all the top guys but it is cool that people generally expect me to be up there challenging for the wins.
By the time we get to opening night of our season at BayPark the many times NZ Champion Midget and Sprintcar driver Michael Pickens will probably have turned more laps on dirt over this past winter in the U.S and Australia than I have in the past 2 seasons but hey we’ll give it our best, soak up the pressure and see what drops out. When we get to Western Springs Opening Night that’ll be the first time, I haven’t driven out the pit gate!
Turner– A lot of people ask if you are confused on what you want to end top driving longer term and why drive both Sprintcars and Porsche now rather than focusing on just one?
Hodson – It’s pretty simple and complicated at the same time if I am honest. People probably think the opposite, but the Porsche and Sprint car need a lot of the same inputs from me as a driver. Neither car responds just to a just ‘stand on it’ approach but tactics and believe it or not the fastest Sprint car laps are when I get the brake pedal right and not so much the gas pedal.
These cars are brutal and there’s a magical fine line in there somewhere where you harness that brutality into something very special and that’s the art in driving them and alongside some of the greats in the sport as well.
I have learnt things in both types of car that I can take to the other discipline and respect the elements in racing at the same time. There is a level of maybe uniqueness there but for now I want to be able to pursue this and see where it leads.
New Zealand develops plenty of fast drivers in so many aspects of the word “Motorsport” but I feel I am doing something pretty different and my family feels it as well and they are my number one supporters in all of this.
Some of the circuit guys came and watched some racing at BayPark last year. It was actually super funny about half of them looked damn straight scared at the whole thing. Stand by the pit gate at BayPark for a few heats – you’ll get what I mean when you see just how hard these cars are driven and how tight the racing is and no quarter given.
My future overseas will be determined by my uniqueness maybe. We as a family run set up can’t afford to buy our way in so we’ll keep being different and hope some of those special eyes in the U.S etc. might take a look and see some true value in what we are doing and the amount of time we have done it in. There are very few of us.
SVG has dabbled in Sprint cars and will be back for a couple of meetings this Christmas at Western Springs as well and Supercar drivers Cam Waters, Brodie Kostecki have had runs on the dirt as well so in that sense I take the approach of why not me too.
One of the hottest properties in driving circles in the U.S of course is Kyle Larson. Cruz and I still have the shirts he signed for us at Huntly Speedway a number of years ago and who wouldn’t want to try and do even a quarter of what he has already done. Every opportunity he gets he goes back to the Sprint cars and midgets as well.
One only has to look at all the awareness around SVG coming back and doing some Sprintcar shows and how it works for both the fans and the sponsors and again just like Larson why can’t I aim to hit that kind of benchmark.
Big Corporates have seen the opportunities. Peter Adderton as an example has backed Sprintcars in the past and no doubt will again and he’s been a bit of a talent finder as well and a big supporter of many drivers. There are a lot of one trick show ponies, our opportunity is to be one of very few who can get it done like Kyle.
There’s a lot of interest in people that are multi disciplined and I make no secret of the fact that we hope to get our big break through that uniqueness. Whilst we have a lot of guys that deserve their icon status it’d be great to see people start to notice the new guys coming. I was hoping and trying to make the grid at the Napa Sprint car deal at Adelaide.
It would have been cool to have a current Porsche driver who happens to race Sprintcars be on that grid but the organizer’s seem to have preferred established stars for their show. I think everyone missed a PR and marketing angle there but I guess we have to work harder and that I will, as something like that only makes me desire it all even more so it’s a case of turn it into a positive, never a negative and keep the mind focused on the bigger picture.
Turner – I’ve heard there is a new opportunity in the Sprintcars this year – tell us more!
Hodson – Yes super excited about this. The mega respected car and team owners Geoff and Suzanne Harper from HLR in Auckland have put us in a pretty special Sprintcar for this coming season. I really can’t thank them enough and there’ll be more news on that front in the coming weeks but it’s looking like a 22 or 24 show season with them and super exciting stuff.
That’s going to double my Sprintcar laps in a year just like that. Cruz my brother is taking over the old Skinny car and that’ll run the number 66M which is really cool.
My new ride will be the 28M and she’s pretty well all brand new. I couldn’t have dreamed of ever having a brand-new car under me and its very seldom an opportunity like this comes along. I don’t think any of us really want to get it dirty as it’s so new and shiny right now but hey that’s racing on the clay isn’t it. HLR have put a brand new KRE engine under me as well so really, I will have no excuses but after 20 shows I still have a lot to learn.
Our old KRE engine was awesome but I didn’t’t even dream about ever having a new one! So very very lucky for this chance and the faith they have put in me. There’s lots of chat and expectation running around because of the new motor but hey Ken and the team at KRE build such a good motor I don’t expect it to be significantly better than our old one – happy to be proven wrong though. Anyone expecting us just to blow everyone’s doors off will be sadly mistaken it’s about refining my skills and then performing each and every time. The learning never stops – BayPark will be home but we’ll venture to all the Western Springs shows, Kihikihi and even Christchurch this season. We’ve had a couple of goes at Kihikihi before but have never ventured beyond there so there is a lot of ‘new’ in the season ahead that’s for sure but that’s what expands my growth.
Turner – How have you found support from NZ this year?
Hodson – The fan support has been awesome and, in some ways, I hope this article helps people understand just a bit more about how tough it is offshore and its more than just turning up and driving a car fast. Just as the academy taught me it’s about the complete package both on and off track and how you mentally cope as well so lots of factors come into play. Commercially it’s been super tough. This is not a cheap sport and never will be and we all know this but to make it work you need to secure funding, yet perform to gain the funding so it has a tail that chases you in circles in some ways.
We’ve had some associate sponsors who have kept helping us in the background but financially we have had no support from New Zealand and understand the economy is very tight but we strive to prove we are worthy. We’ve been really lucky to have recently partnered with some Australian companies who are really awesome to work with and we’re super excited about the futures with them, but as a kiwi you’d always love to have someone kiwi in behind you too, its that’s sheer sense of kiwi pride.
We’ve worked hard and we’ll just keep doing everything we can to find some commercial partners from within New Zealand also. We won’t give up, make no mistake on that.
Our Sprintcar partners have come together really nicely. Still a couple of discussions ongoing but catch our socials for news there in the next week or so.
Turner – So just before we wrap up looking at the rest of 2024 what’s the plan ahead for you?
Hodson – We’re based back in New Zealand now rather than living in Australia, it made sense for now to come back and save funds wherever we can. There is this big gap between the Tasmanian round and the final round at Sydney Motorsport Park so it seemed the most positive thing to do. I can train anywhere and being back here meant I could get prepared for the summer back here and connect with those I will be with around that section of the year. It doesn’t’t look at this stage that we’ll be doing any circuit racing but hopefully someone might pick us up for the 6 hour – we did put the GT4 on Pole in the GT4 class last year and I have a pretty good reputation now for being a safe set of hands so fingers crossed and I’d be very keen to be part of it.
I’ll be doing some work with Action Motorsport who have been with me since this started on the tarmac and helping them with a bit of driver development stuff, so it’s great to assist them for all they have done for me as well.
That’ll be cool to take what I have learnt this year and use it to help others and that’s how I see this game working. Many have helped me so even at this stage of where I am you give back as well its part of how it all works.
I might have to keep a few secrets though especially given there are rumored to be another pile of Kiwi’s heading to Australia next year so there is still that completive element for sure.
We’ll then head to Sydney for a test early in October and then the final round of Michelin Sprint Cup is October 18th Really looking forward to that and being back in the car again with everyone from McElrea Racing. We’ve practiced at SMP before and it’s a super cool, technical, scary and fast track – perfect you might say so certainly keeps the driver very honest. Straight back to NZ for Opening night at BayPark Oct 26.
The new Sprintcar deal is going to be very different but I have learnt a lot working within a team this year and are really looking forward to putting this to use. We’ve got everything crossed that Skinny will be able to get mobile (after his recent accident ) and continue to engineer me in the new beast. He’s simply a great asset in how he understands speedway. Wouldn’t be the same without him and we’ll find a way even if we have to motorise something to get him there!
The summer ahead is exciting but equally so are the ideas and thoughts of 2025 that’s rapidly approaching and the chance to improve on everything I have learnt in the past twelve months and more so as you very first mentioned the past two years of doing all of this. Who would have thought from where I was two years ago to sitting here now with you but equally, I can’t stop now, it’s about keeping the goals in check and making as many as we can convert to the real thing and progress. You may say I have arrived but to me I have only just got started.
Ayrton Hodson sat down with David Turner at his Tauranga base for this chat on his return to New Zealand and shared his time to tell of this quite amazing two-year journey to date. Certainly the talent is there and everything he has done to date shows this with the impression of much more to come making him another one of the many kiwis proudly waving the flag for New Zealand and gaining the attention of fans and with the hope backers as well to see where this all leads.
I have known this young man from birth.
Been involved with his Dad Paul for a lot years in Speedway and I wasn’t at all surprised that he followed in Dads foot steps.
To see him go from Mini Stocks to what his racing has evolved into,very proud to know him and will be watching where it will take him in years to come….