Matthew McCutcheon is focused on a perfect weekend at Hampton Downs if he is to snare this season’s Toyota 86 Rookie of the Year honours.
McCutcheon is sixth in the overall standings with one round left to play and is second of all rookies.
He is mathematically in with a chance of stealing the overall championship but will need every bounce to go his way if that is to happen.
Instead, McCutcheon wants to close out a successful transition into the 86 category with a solid haul of points. And, if all goes his way, a rookie championship in his back pocket.
“We’re feeling really happy because we’ve got a lot of pace at Hampton,” he says. “It’s where I qualified third, which was my first really good result.
“We’ve got the cars setup and ready to go back with what we had last time. Hopefully, we can do better and get to the top step again.
“We’re still in with a really good hunt [of Rookie of the Year]. So, with some strong results, it should be ok. But we’ve got to pretty much have a perfect weekend, which is sometimes harder to ask for.
“But that’s why we love racing.”
McCutcheon scratched his name onto the winner’s column in early March, earning his first victory at Pukekohe Park.
“That was awesome. With how tough it is in 86, to get a win felt so good.”
But the next race meeting at Taupo Motorsport Park didn’t yield such good results.
McCutcheon felt he lacked the overall pace of some of his rivals. He still managed to finish all three races, but it was a timely reminder of how tense the 86 series is.
“As a team, we didn’t have the overall pace as some of the others did, but we worked hard and got the cars into a position where we could work up the field.
“I think we qualified tenth, and we got a fifth and a sixth, which is good that we lessened the damage. It could have been a whole lot worse.
“It wasn’t our optimal weekend, but you’ve got to have a bad weekend to have a good weekend.”
Hugo Allan currently leads the Rookie of the Year championship.
Allan picked up his first race win at Taupo and has a 33-point buffer over McCutcheon.