Hi all. Intro time I guess. I am Mike, 56, I live in Arrowtown New Zealand and have a couple of Stangs. My current race car is on my car profile, a '96 Cobra in black, blacked out interior, caged and modified but street legal. I have had it for about 12 years now and use it for track racing and Targa road rally events which are between two and six days long, often covering over 2000kms with sometimes up to 1000kms (600 miles) of closed road stages, so real marathon efforts.
My track racing is mainly limited to Highlands Motorsport Park, https://www.highlands.co.nz/ where I do our sprint series which is 6 to 12 lap races with races grouped into similar lap times, so the racing is always fun. I have done some endurance racing doing 1hr races on my own but now you need to have a $300,000 GT3 Porsche to come 14th so I stay away from that now. I have raced at every track in NZ though, even did a 24 hours of Lemons at Hampton Downs last year.
I used to be a Traffic Cop but don't hold that against me! I did 20 years in that job, specialising in fatal crash investigation and training newbies how to drive and do the job, then left to do some random stuff then started a driver training school for a while. I also worked at Highlands as an instructor and as a contractor to BMW as an instructor for their Xdrive, Snow driving training programmes on occasion.
I have a position now as an official with Targa NZ where I am either a Tour midpoint, which looks after the non-competetive high speed tour group, or I fill in as a Zero Car (safety car) for the Targa competition and even as a co-driver if needed. I have a category win in a two day Targa event a few years ago in a BMW M3 E46. I first got into Targa as a co-driver for a mate who had a 2005 Ford GT which we thrashed all over the country a few times.
This is a YouTube video that I did a few years ago showing a bit of what we do in the Targa Tour. It looks a bit slow due to the wide angle lense of the GoPro and we go a bit faster now too!
I am currently retired officially and spend my time working on my small farm and my various cars. I have the Cobra, a 2011 GT for a sunday car, an ex Ambulance Chev c1500 camper with a 350, various other cars, trucks, pickups etc and my daily driver is a 2010 Ford Falcon XR50 Ute which is like a modern El Camino, ie a 2 door rwd with a long pickup bed and a 4ltr straight six.
Anyway, I'm glad to be here on the site and look forward to hanging out a bit.
My track racing is mainly limited to Highlands Motorsport Park, https://www.highlands.co.nz/ where I do our sprint series which is 6 to 12 lap races with races grouped into similar lap times, so the racing is always fun. I have done some endurance racing doing 1hr races on my own but now you need to have a $300,000 GT3 Porsche to come 14th so I stay away from that now. I have raced at every track in NZ though, even did a 24 hours of Lemons at Hampton Downs last year.
I used to be a Traffic Cop but don't hold that against me! I did 20 years in that job, specialising in fatal crash investigation and training newbies how to drive and do the job, then left to do some random stuff then started a driver training school for a while. I also worked at Highlands as an instructor and as a contractor to BMW as an instructor for their Xdrive, Snow driving training programmes on occasion.
I have a position now as an official with Targa NZ where I am either a Tour midpoint, which looks after the non-competetive high speed tour group, or I fill in as a Zero Car (safety car) for the Targa competition and even as a co-driver if needed. I have a category win in a two day Targa event a few years ago in a BMW M3 E46. I first got into Targa as a co-driver for a mate who had a 2005 Ford GT which we thrashed all over the country a few times.
This is a YouTube video that I did a few years ago showing a bit of what we do in the Targa Tour. It looks a bit slow due to the wide angle lense of the GoPro and we go a bit faster now too!
I am currently retired officially and spend my time working on my small farm and my various cars. I have the Cobra, a 2011 GT for a sunday car, an ex Ambulance Chev c1500 camper with a 350, various other cars, trucks, pickups etc and my daily driver is a 2010 Ford Falcon XR50 Ute which is like a modern El Camino, ie a 2 door rwd with a long pickup bed and a 4ltr straight six.
Anyway, I'm glad to be here on the site and look forward to hanging out a bit.
