YOUNG GUNS: AARON CAMERON

Young Guns: Aaron Cameron

Versatile is one way to describe Aaron Cameron’s career to this point. He has dabbled in a wide array of categories for someone in the infancy of his career. From SuperUtes to Toyota 86 to TCR, Cameron has tasted success in each, earning him a reputation as one of Australia’s brightest young talents.

Auto Action spoke to Cameron after he arrived home from testing with leading British Touring Car Championship squad Team Dynamics and a karting expedition in Macau where he again finished strongly. Reminiscing about his beginnings, Cameron said his career snowballed once he was a proven frontrunner in karting.

“It all started in go karts, then went to do some casual driving and racing and then it kept on getting more serious,” Cameron explained to Auto Action.

His first step out of karting was into the Victorian Formula Ford Championship in 2016 before tackling the highly competitive Toyota 86 Race Series the next year.

“They all say Formula Ford is the first step to learn all the basics,” he said. “I thought it was great, I loved it. But after Formula Ford there were no goals to go to F4.

“The 86 Series didn’t pan out perfectly for me. I think it is a great platform, just had a few too many crashes in my first year, so it took a lot of our budget out pretty soon.”

Concurrently, Cameron ran in a variety of other categories including karts, HQs, Excels, V8 Utes and Formula Ford to significantly increase his seat time and quickly grow his experience.

“We never really focus just on one category to expand what I drive, so the pressure is on me whenever I jump in the cars. There is no excuse that I haven’t done 10 days testing,” he said.

For 2018 the Victorian decided to focus on two categories, the most diverse of any in Australia. These were the KZ2 Australian Karting Championship and the inaugural SuperUte Series driving a Peters Motorsport Mazda BT-50.

Despite the challenge it proved to be a very successful year with Cameron winning the KZ2 Australian Kart title.“It was something we had been working towards for a long time,” he said.

“We didn’t expect to win, considering we didn’t do the amount of testing that a lot of the other guys did.

“Luck finally went our way.

“We knew what we had to do at the last round to win it, so played it safe and finally got that national title.”

Although Cameron finished only fifth in the SuperUte Series, a category that has copped a lot of flak during the past two seasons, there are no regrets.

“The SuperUtes were pitched as an alternative pathway into Super2 and on to Supercars: obviously it hasn’t turned out to be the greatest thing,” he said.

“It was great fun and we had great sponsors on board. If I didn’t go into SuperUtes I don’t know what else I would have raced and it certainly wouldn’t have been Super2 or Super3, I couldn’t afford any of that.

“Maybe I’d have been racing 86s or Formula Ford again but you don’t get as much exposure. I mean we were eight rounds in front of Supercars on the TV.

“I had a couple of cool races. I won a race, fastest laps and a couple of roll-overs. Those aren’t the best way to get your name out there, but it did, so I can’t really complain too much.”

Last season began with victory in Class D at the Bathurst 6 Hour alongside Kyle Gurton and Cooper Murray in his own Toyota 86, which he continues to run in both Toyota 86 and production car events for customers.

“I’d raced the 6 Hour once before and this time decided to enter one of my own 86s with the help of family and friends to get the car from 86 spec to production car spec,” Cameron told AA.

“It took a lot of work but got it done and to win the class was pretty cool considering there was some decent competition. We just did what we had to in the race pretty much, so it was good.”

At that stage Cameron was heading down Supercars pathway, but this soon changed. An opportunity to link up with MARC Cars Australia creator Ryan McLeod began his journey towards winning the Michelin Cup for rookies after the inaugural season of TCR Australia.

“Ryan has been really good, really helpful from the first year in 2017 when I raced his MARC I, and we have sort of grown on that relationship further and further,” he said.

“I think I did my first race in an Audi TCR car that he was running at Barcelona, that was a bit of a shock to the system.

“I was given a call on the Monday, flew out on the Wednesday, and then I ended up starting the race.

“That was a really nuts one trying to keep everything in check and make sure you just do your job.

“At that stage TCR wasn’t in Australia and I didn’t even know about it, Supercars was where we were heading, TCR came up and we went that way instead. At the start of the year I didn’t think it was going to get off the ground because I didn’t know of many cars in the country, and then it started to quickly come together.

“We kept speaking to a lot of teams. Ryan helped a lot with contacts and all that and eventually we got to put a deal together with MPC (Melbourne Performance Centre) for the first round, and then it just kept evolving from there.”

In the MPC team Cameron was joined by a number of well-established names both nationally and internationally, which the former karting champ found very much to his benefit.

“It ended up being a really good team to go with, all these different people, I could just take all the different pieces that I needed from each driver,” he said.

“Garth Tander, he was the first one that really showed me that you really do have to give these things a crack.

“Jean-Karl Vernay really threw a spanner in the works with the way to drive these cars. When you looked at his data it was nuts. After QR I tried to adopt some of the things he was doing and it paid off, especially at Tailem Bend.

“Russell Ingall was good more from a racing perspective, how to race people in tin tops when you are trying to pass, not bump and run but keep up their arse and push them into a mistake.”

The gradual improvement showed when Cameron started the final race of the season second in the outright points behind runaway series winner Will Brown, but a mechanical problem halfway through the race halted his challenge and Tony D’Alberto scored enough points to take the position.

“It was disappointing, but everyone had their mechanical issues throughout the year, we were just the unlucky ones to have it in the last race with about four or five laps to go,” he said.

“It just made it a little harder to swallow.

“There were expectations from my point of view to go well but, at the same time, look who you are up against. It was even cooler to get third in the series.”

Since returning from his BTCC test, Cameron’s appetite to take on the world of touring cars has been whetted and he is eager to pursue a career in Europe next year, which can be read in Auto Action #1777.

Article originally published in Issue 1778 of Auto Action.

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