KARTING - Rising star on the right (dirt) track

THOMAS Hughes has loved the speedway ever since he was 4 or 5 years old - so it's no surprise really that he's beginning to earn a reputation as a dab hand on the dirt.
The 17-year-old was taken to the speedway in his native England as a youngster and the excitement of the sport stuck immediately.
"I've always liked it ... I remember going along as a kid and I suppose I've been stuck on it since then," he said.
Hughes was one of the most successful of the small travelling band of Whangarei drivers at the New Zealand Karting dirt nationals at Rotorua recently.
He came fourth in the senior lights' class - a result that suggests he is heading in the right direction with his pursuit of dirt racing rather than the more common tarmac racing.
Hughes and his family have been in New Zealand for 10 years and Hughes, a self-confessed petrol head, is keen on eventually getting into speedway racing.
He has won at all three meetings he has competed in at the "dirt" meetings held by the Whangarei Kart Club this season - earning him the club championship title.
"I've been doing it for three, almost four years now, we used to do a bit of motor cross but we decided to go for four wheels rather than two," he said.
Hughes and his dad, Donald, are pretty much a team when it comes to racing. Thomas does the driving and his dad is the pit crew, but Thomas also works on the kart and works for his dad part-time to help pay for some of the costs of karting.
"We aspire to doing speedway eventually but can't really afford to do it yet," Donald said.
"Although karts aren't exactly cheap they're relatively cheap, as far as motorsport is concerned."
Thomas said they had raced away at national events but not a great deal.
"I'd like to do some bigger meetings in Auckland but it's not always easy to get the time to get away," he said.
That's unlikely to improve, with the high school student planning to study architecture next year at NorthTec.
Right now, he and the rest of the club are concentrating on the build up to the Whangarei Kart club's biggest annual meeting - "Summerslam" in January - an event that sees a large number of karts entered from Auckland and other clubs from around the top of the North Island.
Last year, more than 70 karts competed at the club's track at Austin Rd in Maunu and Thomas' attention will be back on the tarmac - rather than on the dirt.