RallySport Magazine April 2017

had quite a bit of input from Hayden
(Paddon) all the way along, and he’d
been talking about building a car for
New Zealand. By December in 2015
we had an order from Hyundai New
Zealand to build a car for Hayden to use
in New Zealand, then we had Spencer
Winn from TransNet order the Skoda
that Glenn Inkster is now running.
“Both of those cars were started on
January 5, 2016 and were obviously
completed in time for Otago three
months later, which was a massive,
massive job.”
That process would see as many as
seven contract fabricators/mechanics
on top of the three full time staff in
Force’s original workshops for as many
as 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
Later in the year, Force would move to a
new, purpose-built facility that includes
engine and gearbox rooms, fabrication
areas, as well as general preparation
and assembly areas, as opposed to the
old facility that would see the whole
process done in the same area.
One of the interesting points learned
in the process of building the three
different cars was the differences in the
amount of work required across what,
externally, are three similar-styled small
hatch backs.
“The Hyundai required a lot of
work and anything with small wheel
arches takes a fair bit of extra work,”
Hawkeswood explains.
“The Mazda’s a fairly easy car because
the floor pan is the same as a CX-3
small sized SUV, so it doesn’t require
any work around the wheel arches. The
rear subframe always goes in easily
because we effectively put a whole
rear floor into each car. With the front
subframes, some don’t look quite as
nice as others because the way the
points work out the car needs to fit the
subframe, rather than the subframe
fitting the car, but if you start trying
to make a new subframe for every
car, that’s where the time and money
comes from.”
The debut event for the cars went
well, with Paddon taking victory in the
Hyundai by a record 9 minutes, 22.1
seconds over the two days in the 2016
Otago Rally, while Hawkeswood would
take fifth place despite some niggling
problems. All three cars set top three
stage times on their first event.
Hawkeswood would carry on to claim
third place in the NZRC for 2016 after
Paddon’s WRC commitments meant he
was unable to compete outside of the
opening two rounds.
On top of the busy programme of
running the cars, the concept took off
to the point where a 12 th bodyshell
is about to head to the workshop to
receive the AP4 treatment.
“The concept took
off, to the point where
a 12th bodyshell is
about to head to the
workshop to receive
the AP4 treatment.”
While Force Motorsport have just
three full-time staff, which not only
cover preparing shells but also running
Hawkeswood’s campaign event to
event, the team also have access to a
large amount of skilled contractors and
are able to outsource machining work
while keeping the fabrication side of
things completely in-house.
On top of that, the team’s complete
maintenance schedule, plus the
The purpose-built Force
Motorsport workshop is the
home of AP4 rally cars in NZ.
building and development of engines, is
all done in-house.
“Tim Keegan and Kane Hombre
take care of the fabrication side of
things and Norm Soo takes care of the
engines, gearboxes, shock absorbers
and tuning.
“We have a couple of guys we take
on from the local Manukau Institute
of Technology Motorsport course in
Pukekohe. We try to take on one guy a
year from that, which is good and we
are due to take on another one soon.
We’ve also got several local engineering
companies who do all of our CNC works
and things like that.
“Fabrication wise, we do all of our
own roll cages, subframes, fuel tank
covers, transmission tunnels, basically
all the tube and sheet metal work is
done in-house.
“We’ve got a part-time draughtsman
APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 11