Kiwis have swept the podium in the opening round of the Formula Pro USA F4 Championship with Ryan Yardley securing back-to-back race wins and Bailey Paterson capturing a second and third-place result.
A rookie determined to leave his mark, ex-Toyota 86 New Zealand Champion Yardley sealed pole position and wins in both races at Auto Club Speedway in California. Equally impressive was that Yardley hadn’t been in an official championship race in over 18 months after the Covid-19 pandemic thwarted his initial plans to race in the United States.
Yardley only missed out on scoring a maximum points haul after Kiwi Motorsport teammate Patterson clinched the two bonus points for fastest lap on Sunday’s second affair.
Rising Formula Ford star Paterson was experiencing his first taste of racing on the international stage, and his pair of podiums were demonstrative of the promising potential he offers to the team moving forward.
The weekend’s opening race was dominated by the Kiwi Motorsport team with Yardley and Paterson dicing for the lead along with the team’s third entry of American racer Joseph Daniele.
A mistake by Paterson would open the door for Yardley and Daniele to lock out the first two podium results.
Paterson would then have to fight back onto the rostrum on Sunday after a sluggish start had him relinquish a spot to Daniele and allow Yardley to ease to an unrivalled second race win of the weekend.
“It was a good weekend for myself and Ryan,” said Paterson.
“I have to give huge credit to my engineer for giving me such an awesome car to work with and helping me adapt my driving style to get up to speed so much quicker was running very strong in the first race when a small mistake threw me back but still managed to hold onto third.
“Sunday was good found some more pace had a poor start in the race back climbed my way back up to second and set the fastest lap which was really cool but I couldn’t have do any of it without such a professional team and group of guys and girls around me so huge thanks had to go out to kiwi Motorsport for the weekend.”
Kiwi Motorsport’s incredible 2020 campaign which included sealing a third US F4 teams’ championship and a dominant spree of results in their one-off hits in the Formula Pro Western Championship, has now come to an end.
The team now looks to prepare for the 2021 US F4 season which is slated begin at Sanoma Raceway on April.
Yardley is expected to make a full-time move to the US F4 championship with Kiwi Motorsport next season.