Photo: Renault Sport/DPPI
Richie Stanaway will likely make his return to racing from injury in this year?s Porsche Supercup, he has told the New Zealand Herald.
The 21-year-old Kiwi driver has enjoyed an immensely promising career in junior single-seaters up to 2012, with titles in the ADAC Formel Masters category and in German F3. Last year, he joined Lotus in Formula Renault 3.5 (after winning a GP3 race for their ART squad the year before and being very quick in testing), but his season was cut short when he received a back injury after an incident at Spa-Francorchamps. Having fully recovered, he has been working on securing a comeback to racing with continued support of the Lotus F1-affiliated Gravity Sport Management.
“There’s been a pretty big change in my strategy for the next couple of years,” he said. “My management still believe in my ability as a driver and rather than re-invest in me racing World Series by Renault or GP2 – the level I was before my injury – it looks like I’ll be doing Porsche Supercup.
“You just have to look at Paul di Resta and how he got into F1. He was quite frustrated being taken out of Formula Three and put into DTM by Mercedes but went on to win the championship in 2010. On the back of those results he was drafted into F1. Considering I’m still under management by Lotus F1 there’s no reason to think I couldn’t make it, either.”
The Porsche Supercup series has been a support championship for Formula One since 1993. The last three seasons in the category were dominated by German DTM hopeful Rene Rast.