By Tania Phillips
New car teething problems weren’t enough to hinder teen-aged Rally driver Joshua Wiedman who took out the first round of the Queensland Junior Rally Championships at Manumbar near Gympie at the weekend.
The 17-year-old apprentice mechanic, who has been competing off road since he was 14 and in Rally’s since 16, came first in the Queensland Junior Championship and was second in the Qld two-wheel drive championship.
According to his father Paul it was good start to the season for the determined young driver who now lives at Logan Village but learned and honed his skills on the family farm near Warwick.
“It was the first time driving a new car that we’ve just built so we were sort of expecting to have a few teething problems with it which is quite common when you build a new car,” Wiedman Senior explained.
“But he couldn’t have done too much better than he did, even though he had a few problems so that’s great.”
Paul said it will be a busy season for his son, competing in three rounds of the Qld championships and five rounds of the Australian Championship on top of that with the season ending with the final race in November.
“This year we’re doing all three rounds of the Qld rally championship, five rounds of the Australian Rally Championship as well as the Finke Desert Race,” he said.
“It’s a lot of travelling and a lot of kilometres. It will take us all over Australia.”
But while business and life has seen the family move to Logan Village in the past year, Warwick will still play an important part in Joshua’s preparation, as it has in his in his love of the sport.
“We are so busy with work and travelling,” Paul said.
“He has a lot of time off work due to the racing.
“But we are still trying to get out there once a month over the next six months just to do testing and practice. We’ll be back out their mid-April. It’s still nice to get out there and do some practice and stay the night. We still love it out there don’t get me wrong. It’s still an important part to his training and that’s the key to why he’s done well it’s purely because he practices so much and he has had so much practice from a young age.”
Paul himself was no stranger to rallying and at first his son showed little interest, but one drive and he was hooked.
“He was driving around our property in a buggy I had and we noticed he was pretty good,” he explained.
“I said do you want enter a race and see how you go and he just went from strength to strength. It was quite amazing his progression was so fast to the high level.
“In 2022 he won the fourth round of the Australian side-by-side championship which was a great effort, he was one of the youngest people to ever do that. That was at an adult level too. He’s won two Qld junior off road championships. He was the youngest driver at the Finke Desert Race last year. He did really well there, he had the second fastest time in the side-by-sides out of 72 cars. He was second fastest on Day two. He’s had three qualifying wins for the year in the prologue (qualifying) for the Australian Side by Side championship.
“He’s ticked a lot of boxes.
“He actually did his first National Round when he was 15. He got an exemption from the sports governing body to let him drive because he was too young. They gave him the exemption due to his driving abilities which is a good show of confidence.”
His family showed confidence in the determined young driver putting in tracks on the former family farm for him to use to practice.
“He had pillows and booster seats at first,” Paul laughed.
“But he’s quite a bit taller now, he’s actually hit six foot now, I don’t know where that came from.”
