Spirit of Richards driving Heimgartner's pursuit of Taupō glory

Andre Heimgartner finished second in the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy standings in 2022, and second last year.

As such, the New Zealander knows the natural next step is victory.

Heimgartner returns to Taupō on April 11-13 as the first Supercars race winner at the North Island circuit, which hosted its first championship round last year.

In emotional scenes, Heimgartner cut through the rain and chaos to win for Brad Jones Racing, in the team’s #8 entry Richards raced in 2009 and 2010.

While he fell short of overall honours on Sunday, it continued Heimgartner’s strong form on home soil, having claimed two podiums en route to third in 2022.

Shane van Gisbergen beat Cam Waters by 25 points and Heimgartner by 43 at Pukekohe in 2022, before Anton De Pasquale ended up six points ahead of Heimgartner last year.

With the legacy of Richards front and centre, Heiomgartner said redemption in 2025 would mean a great deal to BJR.

“It obviously means a lot to our team,” Heimgartner said on The Drivers Seat radio show.

“Jason Richards drove for BJR at the end of the his career, when he was unfortunately dealing with his illness.

“His car was number eight as well, which is my number. There is a lot of deep-rooted emotion associated with it.

“When I won the race last year, Brad Jones was in tears. Then going into Sunday, you could feel the tension in everyone digging deep for something more than racing.

“If we were able to win that, that’s our only goal going there, everyone would be ruined… it’d be great to do it in car eight, it’s one of things that's meant to be."

Heimgartner sits 11th in the championship standings after two rounds — albeit level on points with 10th placed Nick Percat — with three top 10s and an average finish of 10.5.

It’s a better outcome than 2024, when he sat 17th overall with an average finish of 16.0.

"Finished 10th overall for the weekend, so could be worse, could be better,” he said on Supercars’ Cool Down Lap podcast in Melbourne.

“But as the start of a year goes, we're much stronger than we were last year and there's some good glimmers of hope.

“Feeling a bit more positive about where we are as a team. We're not nearly close to where we need to be with different things, but we're heading in the right direction.

"The guys are putting in a lot of work, the engineers, everyone to sort of come together and get it going. I think we'll only get stronger from there.”

Tickets for the ITM Taupō Super 440, on April 11-13, are on sale now.