Ben Taylor to contest Australian F3 title in 2022
Australian Formula 3 Championship race winner Ben Taylor will return to Tim Macrow Racing in 2022 to compete for the championship title.
Despite the national lockdowns preventing the 2021 season from running more than one round, Taylor impressed early in his rookie season by claiming pole position and the feature race win at the opening Sydney Motorsport Park event last March, and holding onto the championship points lead until the season was cancelled in recent months due to the pandemic.
With the 17-year-old showing promise and speed in his first open-wheeler event, team manager Tim Macrow welcomes the young star back to the Melbourne outfit for a chance at the title.
“It was a pretty impressive start for Ben in Sydney taking pole position and the win,” said Macrow. “Normally if a young driver makes mistakes it’s easy to correct them, but it's hard to be fast. And Ben’s got the speed and showed it straight away; he did really well for his first time in the car. It’s been frustrating not racing while lockdowns have been in place because these young drivers didn’t even get a chance to show their full potential.
“Ben’s spent a lot of time on the simulator learning tracks since, we got an exemption for him to test at Winton Raceway a few times and the plan from now until the new season starts is to test at a few more tracks for real so that he can get miles in before racing starts again. The car is being rebuilt from scratch, hopefully we’ll be able to announce a solid teammate for him as well, so once we start racing in 2022 I know he’ll be back on the pace and ready to get even faster,” said Macrow.
Under the eye of Macrow and engineer Terry Stott, Taylor is eager to get back on track and complete what he set out to do before the pandemic put paid to his rookie season hopes.
“It’s been frustrating for sure not being able to race because I spent a few years working on my skills in karts and I just wanted to keep building momentum in F3,” said Taylor. “But to know that I’m back next year means I have something to aim for.
“I’ve been doing a lot of training in the gym and doing simulator sessions, plus my family and our support team are helping me with sponsorship and media plans for next year so hopefully there are no more setbacks and we can just go racing again. Tim and Terry have been working really hard to get the car ready and just keeping me focussed.”
Despite lack of seat time in 2021, Taylor was still able to travel in May to New Zealand prior to Victoria’s extended lockdown to complete approximately 110 laps around Mike Pero Motorsport Park in Ruapuna, aboard the 2021 Toyota Gazoo Racing FT60 TRS.
The full Australian Formula 3 Championship calendar will be announced by the category in due course, as well as Ben Taylor Racing’s full testing and race program for 2022.