The First outing for the RS200

During 1998 a new and exciting hill-climb appeared in New Zealand. The Queenstown Gold Rush inaugural event ran on 12th April and was won by Nobuhiro Tajima in his Suzuki. Rod Millen in his Toyota was second. The event was a great success and with major sponsors including Silverstone Tyres and Qantas it has an excellent future as one of the worlds most challenging races in the international motorsport calendar.

Having successfully tested the car at MIRA, in early 1999, Mach 2 were invited by Grant Aiken of the Queenstown Gold Rush (later renamed as the Race to the Sky) to join the Easter 1999 event. Whilst this was much earlier than the team had originally intended to run the car, it was agreed to ship the car and team to New Zealand and use the race as a shake down test for Pikes Peak. The Queenstown Gold Rush provided an excellent platform for the Mach 2 RS200 and Stig Blomqvist to carry out testing on a mountain course similar to Pikes Peak and also against top competitors Rod Millen and Nobuhiro Tajima.

All teams approach such events with their goal to win and Mach 2 Racing were no exception to this however  with such a newly built car and up against the resources of Toyota and Suzuki, the team were realistic.

At the 1999 event, the RS200 gained the fastest time through the speed trap on the mountain in first qualifying. Unfortunately, due to an oil leak during the qualifying run, whilst the car crossed the finish time in fastest time of the day, it was on fire ! The fire was quickly put out by marshals and Stig was completely unhurt however the damage to the electronics meant that a face on with Rod and Tajima on race day was not possible.

The team returned to the UK undaunted as they had gained valuable technical information enabling further improvements to the engine and aerodynamics.

Last modified: July 21, 2009