Rising Kiwi star Ben Stewart is set for a busy weekend at Queensland Raceway as he runs double duties in the Toyota 86 Scholarship Series and TCR Australia.
Stewart will drive for 99 Motorsport in both series, racing six times and spending nearly five hours on track over three days.
“I’ve never really (raced two series in one weekend) before,” Stewart told Velocity News. “It’s definitely going to be full-on. I’ve spent some time over the week making a schedule of where I need to be to know when I’ve got driver’s briefings, documentation and such.
“On Sunday, there’s one race where I jump out of the TCR and straight into an 86, so that’ll be a pretty big challenge.
“The TCR races are actually the longest circuit races I’ve done because they’re all half an hour long, so that’ll be a challenge as well.”
The Wellington-based teenager burst onto the New Zealand motorsport scene when he swept all three Mazda Racing Series championships over the 2021/22 season.
Since then, he has competed in GTRNZ and was a standout performer in the Trans-Tasman TA2 series last summer.
Stewart also competed in the final two rounds of the 2023 Toyota 86 Scholarship Series and won the Toyota 86 Shootout for a fully-funded place on the grid at Bathurst when the premier Toyota 86 Championship raced in support of the Bathurst 1000.
In 2024, he returned for a full campaign in the Scholarship Series and sits inside the top five mid-season.
“We’ve had some ups and downs, especially at The Bend, where we took a podium on the last day,” he said. “The car was flying in the last race, and we got to the lead on the last lap until we were taken out, which was a bit unfortunate.
“In the first round, we had some car issues, which hindered me a little bit, but I was still in the top five. The second round at The Bend was mixed, and then Phillip Island in the last round, I struggled a little bit with some car issues that we’ve discovered now.
“Overall, it’s been good, but there’s still work to do.”
His performances have caught the eye of 99 Motorsport owner Marcus LaDelle, who drove the team’s Audi RS3 TCR at the season opener at Sandown. Crash damage at that meet left the car sidelined until now, with the Kiwi teenager getting the call-up in the team owner’s place.
“Marcus called one day and said there was a chance to race a TCR at Queensland,” said Stewart. “We were like ‘all right’. We didn’t really expect it. We managed to get a plan together for it to happen, and here we are. I wasn’t expecting it at all.
“There’s not too many expectations because I’ve never driven the car, so I’m pretty new to it all. There are also some really good drivers, including Supercars co-drivers, so I’m up against some really good people. If we’re in the top ten, I’ll be pretty happy with that, and anything else will be a bonus.
“It’s cool seeing my name amongst that entry list. Even arriving at the track, you realise what you’re doing against some pretty established drivers. The amount I’m going to learn out of this will be insane. I’ll take away a lot from it.
“It’s a really professional series and a massive step up from anything I’ve done, so that makes it really exciting.”
After two practice sessions in each series on Friday, Stewart returns to the track for Toyota 86 qualifying at 9.15 am NZST on Saturday. TCR Australia qualifying follows at 10.45 am before he switches back to the 86 for Race 1 at 12.35 pm. His debut TCR Australia race concludes his Saturday activities at 4.05 pm.
The Toyota 86 Scholarship Series opens Sunday’s proceedings at 9.00 for the second of three 20-minute races before Race 2 of TCR Australia at 3.35 pm.
Stewart’s weekend finishes with the final Toyota 86 race at 4.25 pm before jumping in the Audi for the final TCR race immediately after.
Further viewing information and times can be found in the Velocity News Motorsport Diary.
Header Image: Joel Hanks Photography
