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Black Belt Battle: Masterton Motorplex comp season kicking off

27 November, 2018

 

 

The weekend of 8–9 December will see round one of the Masterton Motorplex comp season kick off, and regulars to the track will not only be greeted by the welcome sight of absolutely gigantic timing boards, which where installed over winter, but also round one of the newly formed Outlaw 71 class,we mentioned in Issue No. 162. A full field of 16 racers are expected to run the five-round nationwide series, vying for their share of the $15,000 prize pool, which begins and ends at Masterton.

Outlaw 71 is the brain child of Gavin Doughty and Tod Aitken, and as the name suggests, welcomes any type of race car as long as it runs a belt-driven roots or screw blower with a dial-in between 6.5 and 7.9 seconds. Unique to the class is the reaction-time qualification system to ensure that it’s not always the fastest car nabbing the top qualifying spot. Organizer Gavin Doughty explains: “It’s all about putting on a show!” This is why the class has also adopted another unique aspect in its racer-return format, which means that the full field of 16 cars will contest each of the four rounds during a meeting, and a very tight points format will mean that the competition will go down to the wire.

Clearly it has excited racers, with the likes of Brent Whittingham’s Camaro, Mark Gapp’s Willys, Craig Griffith’s rear-engined dragster, Kendal Smith’s Altered, JD Shepherd’s FED, and Murray Hartley’s brand-new Mustang imported from Australia, all signed up to race.

More to the point

6 March, 2026

This Daimler SP252 is so rare, few people know it exists. It’s one of a kind. It’s the only surviving, in fact the only SP252 ever completed; the would-be successor to the SP250 Daimler Dart. It is also the last sports car to have been designed by Jaguar’s legendary founder, Sir William Lyons.
Perhaps one of the original Dart’s biggest problems was it’s somewhat-divisive looks. It certainly went well enough to win fans, although Sir William wasn’t among them. It crushed the opposition in the Bathurst six-hour race, finishing five laps ahead of anyone else, and it was snapped up by police forces in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, as it was the fastest thing on the road.
So you’d think a stunning new body with the magic Lyons touch would have been a surefire success. Why this car never made it into production is still something of a mystery, as the official explanations barely stack up.

Polishing to perfection

26 February, 2026

The secret to a show-stopping finish is colour sanding, no matter which paint system you use. Even a good painter, no matter how experienced or talented — like my mate Bruce Haye, CEO at Ace Panel and Paint in Whitianga — can’t shoot to a perfect mirror finish. To get that level of perfection, you need to colour sand.
It used to be called ‘rubbing out’ or ‘cutting’, and it was done with pastes that came in cans. They worked — sort of — but the compounds really just rounded off imperfections instead of eliminating them, and they removed a lot of paint in the process. But now your new finish can be made flawless, thanks to microfine sandpapers that come in 1000, 1500, 2000, and even 2500 grit ranges, and Farecla G3 polish — available from automotive paint suppliers.