FACTORY FAST

There’s a distinct team element to endurance racing. Even among the field of the Eneos North Island Endurance Series (NIES), it’s clear that the efforts aren’t simply restricted to engineer and driver. Whether competing in the one-hour or three-hour races, pit lane is a flurry of activity, with drivers, pit crew, mechanics, and helpers swarming over an impressive variety of cars all trying to go the distance. There’s a myriad of classes catering for everything from factory-built GT3 cars to modified ’90s Hondas.

For round one, held at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park in Taupo, we’ve decided to take a closer look at four of the factory-built racers brought in from offshore by their teams to compete for honours against the varied competitive field. It’s a means of getting your hands on a known quantity: a machine engineered at a world-class level and specifically designed to run the distance without suffering any hiccups. Here, among the NIES field, they line up to battle their opposite and equal: the home-brewed hot rod. So, how do they rate?

THERE’S AN AIR OF CLINICAL PRECISION TO THE WAY