Watch out Australia, we have another up and coming young racer that is bursting his way into the International Racing scene and hoping to follow in Daniel Ricciardo's footsteps, 18 year old Thomas Maxwell.
After his humble karting beginnings, where most racers start their careers, Thomas moved to the Australian Formula Ford series before making the step up to Formula Masters and the BRDC F3 Championship.
Now, following in closer in the footsteps of his hero, young Thomas has been signed by Tech 1 Racing to compete in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 series in 2017, the same team Daniel Ricciardo raced with when he contested the Formula Renault 3.5 Championship back in 2010.
Daniel took both pole positions for the team at the season-opening round of the 2010 championship and finished third and second respectively, putting him in the lead of the drivers' standings, but sadly he missed out on the 2010 title buy two points.
Tech 1 racing was set up by French born racing driver Simon Abadie back in 2000 so that he could have a competitive seat where he raced in the French Formula Renault 2.0 series. In their first season Tech 1 secured a total of 7 podiums and 2nd place in the championship. This was just the start of something big as they continued to be competitive, finishing second in the teams championship in 2003.
The Toulouse based squad continued to grow and in 2005 joined the Eurocup Megane Trophy, a segment of the World Series by Renault Championship. Here they excelled with 3 consecutive titles (06, 07, 08).
At the same time, they opted to join Formula Renault 3.5, the springboard to Formula One. Success soon came their way with the Championship title in 2007 and became the team to beat, all the way up until Renault opted to cancel the series. During their time there the French based squad had several of their drivers graduate to the Formula One Championship, such as Daniel Ricciardo, the late Jules Bianchi and Carlos Sainz jnr just to name a few.
Now known for their ability to spot up and coming young talents, several Formula One teams look their way when searching for up and coming drivers for their young driver programmes, such as red Bull racing, Ferrari and Force India.
Now running in the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 Championship, as well as the GP3 series, the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) in the LMP3 and LMP2 categories and the very prestigious Le Mans 24-hour (LMP2), young Maxwell couldn't be in a better place for his Motorsport future.
In fact, for Maxwell, becoming the first Australian driver to race for Tech 1 Racing since Daniel is a source of inspiration and he is hoping to be just as successful as his countryman, if not more, and take the title that slipped ever so gently through Daniel's fingers when he raced for the team all those years ago.
โIt's pretty cool to think Daniel Ricciardo drove for Tech 1 Racing and won races with them. I hope that we can do the same, but getting into the top eight would be good,โ Thomas said. โIf we make good progress we can finish the year on a high with excellent results. I'll fight and give it my best to reach the top!โ
โBut there are certain areas in which I still have work to do. While the performances in the BRDC F3 and Formula Renault cars are pretty much the same, the driving style is different. Nonetheless, I'm confident and I'm going to rise to the challenges I'll meet on tracks I'm racing on for the first time. It's really awesome to compete on such circuits. We'll obviously have some ground to make up on the layouts that are new to me, but hopefully we can progress quickly so that I can prove my worth!โ
The first race of the 2017 season takes place at Monza this weekend. Practice will get underway from 1:30 to 5:30 pm today followed by two more sessions on Friday (10 - 10:50 and 14:05 - 14:55.
Qualifying will take place on Saturday from 9:9:35 with race 1 getting underway at 2 pm. Sunday sees a second qualifying session at 9-9:35 again with the second and final race of the weekend taking place at 12:40 local time.
We at Zero Throttle will keep you up to date on Thomas' progress as the weekend develops.
Introducing young Aussie racer Thomas Maxwell.