Nick Nurmester

Nick Nurmester (born 7th March, 1988 in Birmingham, England) is a Finnish-British racing driver racing under a Finnish license. He is best known for competing in various touring car series and is currently driving in the F3RWRS. He is the cousin of former Formula One driver Niko Nurminen, who is also managing him at the moment. He is also the son of Thomas Nurmester and half-brother of Nathan Nurmester.

Early life

Nick Nurmester is the son of now-retired FIA official Thomas Nurmester, who fell in love with a Finnish exchange student in the winter of 1987, having just gotten out of a nasty divorce the previous year. Thomas already had a son in Nathan, who he had intended to bring up as the next big British racing star. But the Finnish genes Nick had inherited from his mother made Thomas to change his focus, believing that the heritage would play a crucial part in his future success, and Nathan was left out in the cold. This would eventually lead to Nathan cutting his ties with Thomas at the age of 20; they have not talked ever since.

However, Nick wasn't so interested in racing at first, largely caused by the horrors of the 1994 Formula One season. This delayed the start of his racing career by a few years.

Early career

Nurmester's helmet

Nurmester finally started racing karts competitively in Finland at the age of 9, encouraged by his cousin Niko Nurminen's racing efforts. His first season was also funded by his cousin, but the next three ones he spent with various other teams. After one unsuccessful year in the European Junior championship, he returned to the Finnish championship for another two years. In 2003, he took an unexpected turn and raced in the Finnish Jokamiesluokka for the next two years. He then got his first experience with stock cars in a rather unremarkable season in the Honda Civic Nordic Championship. However, his next season in the local Super Touring series was a huge success, losing out to the champion by only six points. In 2007, he started driving in the Nordic F3 Championship again with his cousin's help, but after lack of success Nurminen withdrew his support after one and a half seasons. Nurmester then finished the year in BTCC, but without any chance of success in the hopeless BTC Racing team. In 2009 he made his debut in LFSTCC, showing great skill in qualifying but often failing to convert those chances to results due to his unreliability. He also made an appearance in one Formula Two race this year, an entry funded by his cousin as the last attempt to get Nurmester break through into the single-seater championship. However, Nurmester retired after spinning out in his only race. After that Nurmester concentrated on LFSTCC, being an excellent qualifier but still unreliable in the races. In 2013 he came close to winning the championship but lost after spinning out in the last corner of the last lap of the last race.

F3RWRS

At the 2014 Surfers Superprix, it was announced that Nurmester has signed a contract with JLD Motorsport for a drive in the 2015 F3RWRS championship. However, he suffered from poor reliability and only finished once, in 9th, before being sacked after the Monaco SuperPrix. Before his sacking he was also the test and reserve driver for Melrose Racing Team during the 2015 Rejects of LFS season along with Joel Melrose and Nathan McKane.

It didn't take long for him to be signed by Jones Racing, who had already been interested in him during 2014. As he was retained by the team in a reserve role due to lack of race seats, Nurmester was sent on loan to Kamaha Junior Motorsport to replace the banned Anita Horford. However, his first race for a new team didn't go well as while he qualified 9th, way ahead of his team mate Victoria Desai, in the race he crashed and eventually finished 27th. In the second German race he retired early on with transmission problems, while at Spa he had a very poor race and finished 34th. After a poor qualifying at the first race in Italy, he gained places during the race for probably the first time during the whole season and finished 18th. However in the second race he crashed with Marko Jantscher and finished 29th.

Personal life

Nurmester is the son of former Formula One driver and FIA official Thomas Nurmester, who also had another son - Nathan - with a different mother. This makes Nathan and Nick half-brothers, although they've rarely talked to each other. He is also a cousin of Niko Nurminen, a former Formula One driver from Finland who made sporadic appearances in the mid-90s driving for Pacific, Forti and the failed Precision Motorsports F1 team before moving to F1RGP2C. After retiring from motorsports in 2007, Nurminen has concentrated on helping Nurmester in his motorsports career.

Complete Motorsport Results

Career Summary

Year	Series	Team	Position
1997	Finnish Junior Kart Championship	Nurminen Racing Engineering	8th
1998	Finnish Junior Kart Championship	Team Virtanen	5th
1999	Finnish Junior Kart Championship	Orimattila Racing Team	1st
2000	European Junior Kart Championship	Tikkurila GP Team	12th
2001	Finnish Junior Kart Championship	Tikkurila GP Team	2nd
2002	Finnish Junior Kart Championship	Tikkurila GP Team	1st
2003	Finnish Jokamiesluokka, Junior Series	Independent	8th
2004	Finnish Jokamiesluokka, Junior Series	Independent	4th
2005	Honda Civic Nordic Championship	VAK Engineering	13th
2006	Finnish Super Touring Championship	Independent	2nd
2007	Nordic Formula 3 Championship	Nurminen Racing Engineering	14th
2008	Nordic Formula 3 Championship	Nurminen Racing Engineering	8th
	British Touring Car Championship	BTC Racing	27th
2009	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	ATL Racing	10th
	FIA Formula Two Championship	Nurminen Racing Engineering	28th
2010	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	ATL Racing	4th
2011	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	ATL Racing	8th
2012	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	BH Motorsport	5th
2013	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	BH Motorsport	2nd
2014	Live for Speed Touring Car Championship	BH Motorsport	12th
2015	Formula 3 Rejects World Race Series	JLD Motorsport/Kamaha Junior Motorsport	ongoing

Complete F3RWRS Results

Year	Team	1		2		3	4		5		6		7	8		9		10	Pts	DC
		AUS		TUR		MON	USA		GBR		GER		SPA	ITA		JPN		SUR	0*	N/A*
2015	JLD Motorsport	Ret	Ret	9	35†	Ret
	Kamaha Junior Motorsport										27	Ret	34	18	29

† Did not finish, but was classified due to completing 90% of the race distance
* Season in progress