Renowned for his flamboyant driving style, Andrew Hawkeswood won the NZ Rally Championship at the wheel of a heavily modified Mazda 2 engineered by his own team.

One hundred and forty-six tyres is a telling statistic. That’s how much rubber Thames-born Andrew Hawkeswood chewed through during the six rounds of the 2017 NZ Rally Championship. You can expect this number to live longer in Hawkeswood’s memory than how many stage wins or competition points he accumulated en route to finally winning the championship — at the age of 49.

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His maiden title has come in the twilight of a rallying career punctuated with as many crests and dips as an undulating back road, and the prospect of knock-on success makes victory doubly satisfying. Hawkeswood’s company Force Motorsport engineered the winning Mazda2 AP4 from scratch and is now busy fielding customer requests for similar machines. “I get a buzz from modifying cars, extracting maximum performance and even pushing the rules to the absolute limit,” says Hawkeswood.

Hawkeswood in full flow at the Otago Rally.

“That’s why I helped devise the current AP4 competition category. The regulations allow competitors plenty of freedom to modify the cars, and AP4 has reinvigorated local rallying. The cars actually look like they’re on the edge, and spectators appreciate the sideways antics of old.” Inspired at a young age by a rally driver uncle and by witnessing action from the 1977 Rally of New Zealand, Hawkeswood still recalls the driving exploits of Finnish legend Ari Vatanen and seeing local ace Rod Millen compete in his Mazda heyday.

“At 15, I built a Ford Anglia and went racing on dirt tracks, which was all I could afford back then. Years later, I made my first Mazda connection after returning from a stint as a mechanic for race teams in the US. I worked with Neil Allport during a decade of evolution for the Mazda 323.” Hawkeswood himself became serious about rally driving in the late 1990s and would have been crowned national champion in 2004 were it not for a blown gearbox.

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He still smarts from that disappointment and says there was no chance of his Mazda2 suffering the same fate in 2017. “We left nothing to chance, including choosing the best gearbox we could possibly source — one that’s rated for 920Nm. But everything else on the car — about 600 individual items — had to be fabricated in our Auckland workshop.” Engine builder Norm Soo has worked with Hawkeswood for 22 years and was the sole engineer responsible for developing a bespoke Mazda SKYACTIV engine with direct injection. The motor is a ‘destroked’ two-litre unit with capacity reduced to 1600cc to conform to AP4 spec. The block is carefully modified with a turbocharger integrated to reliably produce 261kW and 550Nm, outputs more commonly associated with V8s.

“We benefited from the input of a factory engineer who visited from Hiroshima but we don’t have the luxury of a stringent testing regime, meaning each season is a journey into the unknown. We were blown away by how well the engine performed all year. “What makes the Mazda2 an ideal platform for rallying is that the floorpan is identical to that of the Mazda CX-3, which is engineered to run with a four-wheel drive system. The bodyshell is very light but the steel is so strong that there is no need for additional seam welding. Safety is paramount; navigator Jeff Cress and I are seated within an 80-point roll cage.”

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The event Hawkeswood rates as a firm favourite is the southernmost Rally of Otago. “The wide and forgiving gravel roads are mostly flat-out with crests that demand bravery. Once a car feels fully up to speed, it’s a matter of harnessing the flow and maintaining momentum. The road becomes a rough guide; you can really take some liberties and Otago suits my driving style.” That driving style, Hawkeswood concedes, is a fraction less exhuberant than it once was, partly due to a clearer focus on finally lifting the champion’s trophy. “In the last two seasons I may have knocked the odd bank but I’ve barely scratched a panel. My driving has evolved in that I take fewer risks but I’ve also become better at managing problems.”

While Force Motorsport celebrates its rally-winning combination, the affable champion accepts that it is the Mazda2 rather than the driver that remains a household name. That doesn’t bother him in the least: “It’s great that spectators can identify strongly with the cars competing, and we will continue to focus on the Mazda brand, developing the AP4 cars and SKYACTIV engines. “At this point, every new build seems a quantum leap forward, and we’re buoyed by the progress and the export potential. In the next five years, I’d expect to see Mazdas winning rally championships all over the world.”

Complex engineering goes into making a winner.

Mazda has a rich and successful rallying record in NZ going back decades. In the 1970s, Kiwi legend Rod Millen lit up stages the world over. Winner of the inaugural NZ national champion in 1975 piloting a Mazda RX-3, Millen followed up with two consecutive wins. After contesting more than 40 different NZ events and winning 18 of them, Millen moved to the US, where he continued his winning streak, with a Mazda RX-7 in the 1979 North American Race and Rally Championship.

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Millen also made several strong showings with a Mazda 323 AWD, bagging the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship in 1989. Meanwhile, Neil Allport took over flying the flag for Mazda at rallies in NZ, first with an RX-7 in 1986, and then with two further championship wins in 1989 and 1992, respectively, in a 323 4WD and a 323 GTX. Now, Andrew Hawkeswood has firmly etched his name in the pantheon of winners who’ve taken a Mazda to the very top of the sport.

Source: zoomzoom.co.nz

Story Andrew Kerr/Photography Todd Eyre & Geoff Ridder.
Copyright Mazda New Zealand.

Force To Be Reckoned With

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