Kiwi teenager Tom Bewley will make his Porsche Carrera Cup Australia championship debut at the Australian F1 GP with his bold black and white liveried Porsche 992 carrying support from NAPA.
Bewley advances to Carrera Cup with Porsche New Zealand and Earl Bamber Motorsport, after becoming their youngest ever scholarship winner last year, and launches his seven-round campaign at Albert Park with minimum seat time after just a single day of testing at Queensland Raceway.
Bewley has only raced on a street circuit once before, at Townsville, where he set a new lap record. However he doubts he’ll come close to achieving that at Albert Park, in a 30-car field full with experience and champions.
“We’re the first cars out and being a street circuit, the track’s quite dirty so we just need as many laps as we can early on.” said Bewley.
“There’s about four other people in the same boat as me that haven’t raced here before so I hope we get a few laps in practice. In the past there’s been stoppages for red flags.
“I feel like I can adjust to new tracks quite quickly so I’m looking forward to the challenge, getting through the round and getting some good points. And then try to make progress for the rest of the year at tracks I’m familiar with and where we get more practice sessions.”
Also new for Bewley at Albert Park will be a joint partnership with NAPA Australia and New Zealand.
“NAPA is pleased to confirm our partnership with Tom Bewley for the upcoming season as part of our continued support of motorsport across Australia and New Zealand,” said Mitch Wiley, Executive General Manager at NAPA.
“We are looking forward to seeing Tom on track at Albert Park this weekend.”
Starting just his fourth season of motor racing, the 18-year-old from Hawkes’ Bay, who finished an impressive third on debut in the Australian Porsche Sprint Challenge championship last year, acknowledges the challenges he’ll face moving up to the latest-generation Porsche 992.
“It’s harder to drive and harder to extract the pace out of than the 991,” said Bewley.
“You don’t have as much feel in the 992. The front is very numb, as they say, so hard to get my confidence up in those high-speed corners where you really have to rely on front grip, obviously the rear as well.
“With the 991 you have a lot of feedback through the wheel, you can feel the tyre moving under you, where the 992 has hardly any feeling so you have to trust the car that it will grip.
“The tyre phasing is also quite a bit different so that’s something I’ll get used to over the season.”
In line with the Porsche 992 cars raced in European championships, the Australian Carrera Cup cars will also be fitted with ABS braking units from this year, another new aspect Bewley will need to master.
“I like the driver aspect of trying to modulate the pedal and get that perfect bleed so you don’t lock up. ABS is just what the rest of the world is doing and getting familiar with it is going to help me in the future but it’s definitely not as rewarding as a non-ABS car.”
Bewley’s on-track action begins with a busy Thursday timetable. The sole practice session starts at 11.45am NZ-time followed by qualifying at 1.35pm and the first of three 13-lap races at 5.35pm. The remaining two races are at night, 8.30pm on Friday and 8.40pm Saturday.
Long-time supporters Dura-Seal and Clipped Assist are joined in 2026 by new supporters NAPA, Tony Quinn Foundation and Adtorque Edge.
