{"id":578218,"date":"2026-04-01T09:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T09:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/578218\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T09:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T09:15:13","slug":"new-zealands-newest-national-champion-marco-manson-coming-to-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/578218\/","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand\u2019s newest national champion Marco Manson coming to Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"New
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarco Manson holds the Morrie Smith Memorial Trophy and the NZ Formula Ford Championship. Image: Geoff Ridder<\/p>\n

Manson will join Tim Macrow Racing in the Motorsport Australia AU4 Championship.<\/p>\n

Manson will head to Australia off the back of dominating the New Zealand Formula Ford Championship.<\/p>\n

He won 11 of the 15 races this season in his rookie campaign.<\/p>\n

With the title, Manson earned an all expenses paid three-day test with Rodin at its test track in a McLaren GT4 as well as Formula 3 and Formula 4 machinery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to do the F4 in Australia this year, which starts in early May. I\u2019m quite excited,\u201d said Manson on The Inside Line with MotorSport New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be run by Mark Pilcher from M2 and Tim Macrow Racing, so it\u2019ll be quite a good team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manson said his primary objective is to reach Formula 1, and identified Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson among his idols.<\/p>\n

Manson comes from a racing family. His older brother raced in the Formula Regional Oceania Trophy while his father Luke Manson raced in the GT New Zealand Championship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of help from having an older brother,\u201d said the 15-year-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s taught me and helped with all the equipment to be really good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve found it semi-natural, and I\u2019ve always been quite good I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Marco<\/p>\n

Marco Manson won all four races at Taupo. Image: Geoff Ridder<\/p>\n

The teenager said making the adjustment from karts to cars hasn\u2019t been as hard as some might think.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was always good in the wet in go karts. When I hoped into cars, my first couple of days I was quite fast compared to most other people\u2019s first days in a car,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was quite a cool thing. I hoped into my first race meeting and got podiums at every round. That was pretty cool.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know a lot of people think it, but I didn\u2019t find it too hard to get into a formula car. I\u2019ve driven an 86 a few times and I find sitting on one side it a bit odd. I don\u2019t find it in a formula car too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

The five-round Motorsport Australia AU4 Championship begins at Winton Motor Raceway on May 1-3. Sydney Motorsport Park will host round two later that month on May 30-31.<\/p>\n

The series will have back-to-back events at The Bend on July 17-19 and August 21-13 on the West Circuit and International Circuit respectively.<\/p>\n

The season will conclude at Sydney Motorsport Park on September 11-13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Manson holds the Morrie Smith Memorial Trophy and the NZ Formula Ford Championship. Image: Geoff Ridder Manson…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-578218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}