Keeping it in the family

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

June is turning out to be another interesting month for Kiwis on the national and international motorsport stage.

Looking back on the past couple of weeks, a particular highlight for me was Robbie Stokes' victory on the Canterbury Rally, round three of this year's national championship. This was Robbie's first national championship event victory. Scored in his home event, it was secured in some style; Stokes led from start to finish, harried all the way by Otago Rally winner and national champion Ben Hunt.

With Robbie's younger brother Jack coming home third to claim his first national championship podium, the Canterbury Rally provided an especially proud day for the pair's parents, Brian and Anne. Brian, of course, is a former national rally winner, and indeed a two-times national champion.

This isn't the first time a son has followed in the footsteps of a national rally winning father; that honour first went to Jack Hawkeswood, son of former national champion Andrew Hawkeswood, when he took victory at last year's Otago Rally. It was, however, the first second-generation victory in the same national championship event; Andrew Hawkeswood never won at Otago, but Brian Stokes has won the Canterbury Rally three times, in 1983, 1988 and 1989.

By way of a small aside, Robbie Stokes has also won the Canterbury Rally three times now, the earlier two triumphs in 2021 and 2023 when the event was not part of the national series.

The Canterbury result leaves Hunt with a slender seven-point lead over Robbie Stokes in the national standings as the series heads into its winter break.

One Kiwi rally driver who won't be having much of a winter break is Hayden Paddon. The Cromwell-based ex-WRC star has recently confirmed he will be contesting the Donegal International Rally in Ireland from June 20-22, ahead of the Ypres Rally in Belgium a week later. He'll then be zipping back to Australia for the Queensland Rally, round three of that country's national championship at the start of July.

Turning to F1, it's been interesting to see the spotlight on driver performance within the Red Bull/Racing Bulls camp switch from Liam Lawson to Yuki Tsunoda.

Equally worrying for Red Bull, Tsunoda's frustration is showing with errors on the track as he struggles with a car that is very difficult to drive. With Verstappen also losing his cool more than once in recent weeks, and only one on-track misstep away from having to serve a one-race ban, life inside the Red Bull F1 camp must be quite tense right now.

Racing Bulls, on the other hand, seems to have settled into a happier groove. Isack Hadjar is proving one of the strongest debutants of the season and, over the past two Grands Prix, the team has moved up to sixth place in the financially important F1 constructors' championship.

While his actual results to date could have been a little stronger, Lawson seems to have found good pace, having been switched from Red Bull to Racing Bulls.

Speculation now seems to centre on Tsunoda's chances of remaining in the second Red Bull seat and, if he does not, who would replace him. Based on form, Hadjar would be the obvious candidate, but as a long list of others have discovered, the second seat at Red Bull is a poisoned chalice; one can imagine the various candidates quietly shuffling themselves to the back of the queue should this opportunity arise.

My expectation is that Red Bull will actually stick with Tsunoda for the rest of the season. And, as I suggested at the time he was dumped from Red Bull, Lawson's "demotion" to Racing Bulls has certainly placed the Kiwi in a far better place from which to build his F1 career.

After a short break, F1 is back in action this weekend with the Canadian Grand Prix, and so the interesting 2025 season will continue to unfold.

Finally for this week, it was great to see Nick Cassidy secure an all-the-way win at the recent Shanghai round of the ePrix world championship. This is a definite bright spot in what has been a pretty miserable ePrix season for Cassidy, his team-mate Mitch Evans, and their Jaguar team.