A bit of Kiwi ingenuity and a lot of luck

BY TUREI MACKEY

A Blockhouse Bay resident has won the oldest motor sport trophy in the southern hemisphere.

Graeme Weller and his G-Force hydroplane racing team claimed the E C Griffith Cup at Lake Karapiro over Waitangi weekend.

"It is one of those things you dream that you might like to win one day," Weller says.

New Zealand and Australian speedboats have competed for the prestigious trophy since 1912.

No Australian competitors were here this year but the event saw New Zealand’s best hydroplane drivers racing along with American champion J Michael Kelly.

G-Force went into the contest as a favourite but suffered serious mechanical problems the day before the big race.

"We broke the engine in practice which then resulted in no sleep for us," Weller says.

It was an engine the team has been developing and were not intending to use this season.

"I just wanted to use it in practice, pull it apart, have a look and test it again."

But the team’s main engine had a broken crankshaft after a previous race in Tauranga.

Weller and crew chief
Kelvin Ransom decided to take the boat back to Auckland to try to iron out the problems.

"We decided to do as much as we could rather then sit back and regret not having a go," Ransom says.

"We utilised some new machinery that neither of us are probably that skilled at using."

Both men worked through the night using their knowledge with whatever they could find.

"It was second-hand bits that we found in the workshop and thought since we had nothing else we would just throw that in," Weller says.

It was six in the morning by the time they got back to Lake Karapiro with the repaired vessel.

Ransom was quietly confident come race day.

"In my mind on the way back that morning I felt we had fixed the gremlins that we found," he says.

"I thought we had a bigger and better engine than what we had the day before."

Weller turned in a perfect performance on the water and won all his heats but he was careful when hitting speeds of 180mph.

"I ran the boat a little lighter and kept the revs down because I knew we had spare parts in it."

- © Fairfax NZ News