Kiwi young gun hoping for Supercars berth after claiming title

Fresh from a maiden ECB SuperUtes Series over the ditch, Kiwi racer Tom Alexander is hoping to step up next year into another category. 

This season's SuperUtes competition represented Alexander's second international motorsport season. After a positive debut last year in a Holden Colorado prepared by fellow Kiwi Ross Stone, he and Stone switched to an Isuzu D-Max and spent almost all season poised as the man to beat — eventually besting defending champ and former V8 Ute champ Ryal Harris. 

Now, Alexander hopes to add his name to the tally of New Zealanders who've raced Supercars' second division — the Dunlop Super2 series.

"I don't know of my plans for next year as yet, I am still working on plans and weighing up all the options," he told Supercars.com. "Looking at all my options, it's no secret I would love to do Super2 and I have definitely been looking into it. 

"It obviously all comes down to sponsorship and how much money we can raise, but I'm definitely not writing off a return to the Utes at some stage. I think they will be a seriously cool thing with a V8 in them, so would love to have a pedal at some stage."

"It was great to get the [title], we've been trying for two years now and that was always our goal when we came into the series when it first started. 

"Obviously Ross [Stone] put a lot of effort in to get the series running with the development phase of it early on, so he definitely wanted a championship to repay his hard work, so I'm just happy I could help him achieve that."

While hopping out of a diesel four-cylinder SuperUte and into a Super2 car sounds like an extreme shift, Alexander has raced similar cars before. In the BNT V8s he competed in an ex-Andre Heimgartner Holden VE Commodore NZ SuperTourer — similar in lap pace to a Supercar. 

Numerous Kiwis have come through the Dunlop Super2 ranks to become Supercars stars. Two-time Supercars champion and newly crowned Bathurst 1000 winner Scott McLaughlin is the most obvious example, having won the Super2 title in 2012. But the likes of Heimgartner, Richie Stanaway, Simon Wills and Chris Pither (both former Super2 champs), the late Mark Porter, Simon Evans, Ant Pedersen, Gene Rollinson, and John McIntyre have all cut their teeth in the class. 

Alexander doesn't have long to ensure his name will be chiseled next to those, given that the Super2 calendar cranks back into life next March on the streets of Adelaide.