Motorsport: Smith eyes record fifth Wigram title

Evergreen New Zealand racing great Ken Smith is in line to win a record fifth Lady Wigram Trophy. Photo / Supplied

As he heads into his 54th consecutive season racing at a national level at Ruapuna this weekend, evergreen New Zealand motor racing great Ken Smith is playing down the possibility of winning the Lady Wigram Trophy for a fifth time.

Smith, who turned 70 this year, shares the record for the greatest number of trophy wins with Graham McRae. But the weight of that achievement, and the prospect of bettering it this weekend, sit lightly on Smith's shoulders.

"It'd be nice, of course, to be ahead of everyone else," he said, "but that's not why I do what I do. I do it because I enjoy the racing. If I win, great, but if I don't, I won't lose any sleep over it."

What Smith can't deny, of course, is his favourite status, his clean sweep of qualifying and all three MSC New Zealand F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series races (which included setting a new category lap record) at the Lady Wigram meeting last year, earning him the celebrated trophy for the fourth time.

Before that, Smith was one of four drivers - Peter Whitehead, Jim Clark and Craig Baird are the others - to have won the trophy three times. In his case, he won it across three different decades (1976, 1990, 2009 and 2010).

This weekend Smith will be one of 18 members of New Zealand's Formula 5000 Association contesting the opening round of the 2011-12 MSC New Zealand F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series at the Wigram Revival meeting at Ruapuna.

The big difference this year is that, for the first time since he returned to the reborn F5000 category, Smith will be behind the wheel of his own car, having bought and had rebuilt over the past 18 months an ex-Danny Ongais Lola T332.

The T332 is the car Smith earned his first Lady Wigram Trophy in and, since his interest in the category was rekindled, he has been trying to buy his original car back from Australian driver Andrew Robson.

Robson, however, was equally determined to keep the car, prompting Smith to eventually look elsewhere for another.

That car was found in a museum in Los Angeles and has since been subjected to a nut-and-bolt restoration and respray by long-time Smith team crew chief Barry Miller in the same La Valise livery Smith's original one wore when it was new.

And though he has yet to properly test the car, Smith says he expects it to be competitive straight out of the box.

This weekend's Wigram Revival meeting is headlined by the MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series and supported by Historic Touring Cars, Classic Saloons, OSCA (Open Saloon Car Association) and Historic OSCA, Mini 7s, Pre 65s and motorcycles.