The opening round of the 2018 Supercars' championship launched into action on Thursday under blue skies. Fans of the V8s will have to wait until Friday to see their respective favourites in action, however, another up and coming young New Zealander was in practice action.
Jaxon Evans is quietly makinga name for himself in the Porsche categories and is generally regarded as a talent to watch in GT cars. Some pretty cool validation came from the one and only Greg Murphy who said in passing, "That bloke is the real deal and is a big talent."
Evans, no relation to the other Evans racing royalty of Owen, Mitch and Simon. The Australian Porsche Carrera Cup driving Evans also has racing royalty in being related to the Lester family. His grandfather is Rob Lester, a former national Formula Vee champion and one of the founders of Manfeild race circuit in the Manawatu, his mum Debbie Lester is a former racer and his father John Evans was a mechanic for New Zealand Formula Ford champion back in the day Andy McElrea, who now runs the young man.
In a different trajectory to most young racers, Evan jumped straight from karting into Porsche racing. "Yeah, it was a little bit different to the way you normally approach things," he said.
"We were lucky enough through our contacts with Andy McElrea Racing that I got a one off test drive in one of his older cars [Porsche] and I seemed to go alright.
"We took a punt and jumped into the category as it was the path I wanted to follow."
It was obvious from early on that Evan had a gift for one of the most difficult to race one-make categories and in 2015 finished second in GT3 Cup Challenge. He backed that up with a second place finish in the A Class Cup Challenge the following year, and in 2017 jumped up into Carrera Cup and was equal top race winner.
The pressure is on this season to grab the championship and if practice was anything to go by, he topped the timing sheets, he's looking good to get at least one race win over this weekend.
"This is only my second time here and I really enjoyed the tack last year. I think I enjoyed the atmosphere the most last year, so to be back here again is special.
"We've worked so hard to get to the point where we are now, we really need to put our best foot forward and get on with it. If our ducks are all in row we'll go well, but there are 26 other cars here and a lot of talent.
"It won't be an easy challenge but I'm feeling pretty confident."
Evans has no desire to try and get into Formula One as he realizes just how hard that is. Being quite sensible, he's looking to emulate Earl Bamber and concentrate of Porsche racing to get to Europe and beyond.
"I love Formula One but I've never been an aspiring Formula One driver knowing how hard it is to get into.
"I've always loved the sportscar scene in Europe and America and that's the dream I'm chasing and why we've gone down this route.
'The cars are hard to drive and we thought that if I could learn how the car works it would help. We managed to talk to Jim Richards we we first started and he said if you can drive a 2007 997 Cup car fast you'll be able to drive anything fast."
He's proved that in spades and is odds on favourite to take the championship out this year.
