MY STORY

Kia ora, my name is Campbell Owens,

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to be a race car driver. I grew up around racing as my Dad used to be a successful speedway and circuit racer. In 2021, a few months before my 12th birthday, Dad passed the torch onto me as I began karting at Kartsport Wellington. I certainly wasn’t fastest on track, but there was nothing anyone could do to rub the smile off my face. I had officially caught the racing bug.

In late 2023 we decided racing at a club level wasn’t cutting it for us anymore, as we decided to make the jump into Rotax Max Junior. However we didn’t necessarily build up into it, my first meeting in the class was the 2023 North Island championships conveniently held at Kartsport Wellington. We were one of the only people not in a big team, just a family run operation trying to do our best and people looked at us like we were crazy. As expected I was a back marker the whole weekend, turns out it’s a bit harder with 3 times the horsepower. However I loved it and we decided to commit to national level karting the next season, as a part of this we decided to travel up to Hamilton and do a club day in preparation for nationals the following April. At this meeting I broke my thumb after a kart ahead of me spun over a crest in torrential conditions.

The start of 2024 was tricky, fresh of a broken thumb we had a fire which burnt down our karting van as well as 2 karts inside yet somehow scrambled our way grid in Auckland a week later to compete. We struggled in the national Kartstars series, finishing at the back in almost every race at Auckland, Hamilton and Blenheim before deciding to not compete at the last two rounds. The simple fact is that I wasn’t enjoying it, we were 15kg over the minimum weight requirement and wasn’t where I wanted or knew I could be. However after we stepped back a little, I found my mojo again by winning the prestigious WPKA Goldstar series before making the jump to seniors and competing towards the front of the field again. At this point we decided that staying in karting wasn’t going to get me any further in my career and that the move into a Formula Ford was the next step.

We made the jump straight into New Zealand Formula Ford at the very beginning of 2025 starting the national championship having only done one test day in a race car, yet again people looked at us like we were crazy, we didn’t care. Once again I was a back marker throughout my debut season in Formula Ford, however a few standout performances such as a P16-P6 at Hampton Downs proved that we could go far.

After the season we decided to throw everything at the upcoming season with a new car and a proper test program leading up to the season including our Manfield Winter Series campaign where we finished 2nd overall with a good haul of wins and podiums.

We started the North Island Formula Ford series on a low, 2 seconds and a win that were taken away due to a carburetor fault left us with zero points. However we made up for this at the following rounds at Taupo and Manfield where I won 6/7 races including the prestigious Dan Higgins memorial trophy race which has been won by the likes of former Formula one driver Daniil Kvyat, current Formula One driver Arvid Lindblad, Bathurst 1000 winner Matt Payne and Indycar driver Marcus Armstrong.

The 2026 New Zealand Formula Ford championship was tricky, we started off with 3 podiums in 3 races at a soaked Teretonga, to a troubled weekend at Levels, to yet another troubled weekend at Taupo and Hampton Downs. Despite this, we finished every single race and a majority of which were on the podium. This led us to winning the North Island Formula Ford championship and finishing 3rd in the New Zealand Formula Ford championship. However this was all stripped away after postseason technical checks which resulted in us being disqualified from the final two rounds of both championships.

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