Race to the Sky returns — win the money-can’t-buy experience

25 February, 2015

The Repco Race to the Sky is set to make a welcome return to the event calendar on April 17–19 at Cardrona Valley.

Returning for the first time since 2007, the event is set to see more than 100 cars, bikes, and buggies tackle the world’s longest gravel hill climb. It’s a 14.km course with 135 turns, climbing from 450 metres to 1500 metres above sea level.

If you want to be in amongst the action, Repco has organized a great prize package, giving you the chance to have a money-can’t-buy VIP experience at the event. To enter, all you need to do is spend $50 in store at any Repco branch before March 31 and text your receipt number and name to 244.

The two winners will be drawn on April 1, and will receive two return flights to Queenstown (departing Auckland, Wellington, or Christchurch), three nights accommodation at Novotel Queenstown, two VIP hospitality days at Repco Race to the Sky, two passenger rides in the Repco Race to the Sky car, and, to top it off, two tickets for afternoon entry to Highlands Motorsport Park.

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”