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 a couple of years before. Thomas already had a son in Nathan, whom he had intended to bring up as the next big British racing star. But the Finnish genes Nick inherited from his mother made Thomas 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 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. In the second race he crashed with Marko Jantscher and finished 29th. A wheel problem in the first Japanese race forced him to finish 28th, but in the second race he scored his debut points with an 8th after a last-lap overtake. At the season-ending Surfers Superprix he finished 15th after a poor qualifying.

Nurmester started the 2016 season with a points-scoring finish in 10th at the first start in Adelaide, but in the second start he suffered a serious collision with Renato Bulku and was very lucky to not suffer any serious injury. At the British round, he scored his best result in the series so far by finishing 2nd in the first start, although he was not classified in the second start after spinning off. In Italy he once again had a mixed weekend, with a 5th in the first race being countered with a disappointing 21st in the second race after a throttle problem. However, everything went perfectly for him at the Pau SuperPrix, where he qualified 3rd and eventually won the race as the cars ahead of him retired due to mechanical woes, promoting him back to 6th in the championship standings. More success followed in Canada where he finished 3rd after the weekend was cut down to one start due to bad weather.

He then proceeded to dominate the German weekend by winning both races, while also scoring his first ever fastest lap and pole position. The podium streak was extended at Zandvoort with a 2nd place finish, which combined with the simultaneous lack of results by Nathanael Cameron and Shane Walsh meant that Nurmester was now a serious title contender.

F2RWRS
Nurmester's first taste of RWRS machinery was at the 2014 Formula 2 Rejects Luxembourg Invitational, where he sensationally qualified 2nd. However, his lack of race pace meant that he finished in a lowly 11th position. After gathering some experience in F3RWRS he also got the nod to drive in the final race of the 2015 F2RWRS season, the Indianapolis 100, as a replacement to Falik Arrows' Yuka Katayama who had been injured in the previous round at Round America. While his qualifying went poorly due to being blocked, he carefully managed through the attrition-filled race to finish 5th and last, scoring points in his first F2RWRS race that counted towards the championship.

F1RWRS
Nurmester drove a F1RWRS car for the first time at the 6th April 2015 Rockingham Test, by paying his way into one of the Aeroracing seats with his connections to Pioneer Corporation. He impressed by being the second-fastest Aeroracing driver, beating among others Daniel Moreno (who was still going under the pseudonym The Stig). His next F1RWRS opportunity was at the 31st May Sandown Test, however he was off the pace there, being only narrowly better than Dave Anderson.

Nurmester made his F1RWRS race debut in the non-championship 2015 Baltic Sea Grand Prix, driving for Nurminen Racing Engineering. Despite qualifying a low 23rd he managed a fine 9th in the race.

Through being signed to Jones Racing's F3RWRS team he also tested their F1RWRS car at the 2016 RWRS Pre-Season Test 2. While he was slower than Terry Hawkin who also tested for Jones on the same day, his performance was good enough for his manager Niko Nurminen to start preliminary plans of getting him a F1RWRS race drive in the 2017 season.

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.

F2RWRS
† Did not finish, but was classified due to completing 90% of the race distance * Season in progress