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A team effort resulted in a win in the Targa Hawke’s Bay rally for Orewa’s Leigh Hopper and Michael Goudie last week.
The pair has been driving in the road race series for 18 months and last year won Targa Rotorua and came second in the five-day Targa NZ.
Winning this year’s Hawke’s Bay leg on May 22 by 42 seconds from ex-NZ rally champion Chris West was a comeback after a major crash in Rotorua a few months ago.
Leigh and Michael walked away from the crash, which involved coming off the road at 140kph, hitting a bank and rolling several times. Michael says “everyone wants to win the big one”, so the pair are now focused on Targa NZ, Auckland to Wellington, in October. Michael credits the mechanical work on their car by Ricky Grey of Mach 1 Engineering in Waitoki with keeping everything running smoothly.
He says his experience as a co-driver with his father, Greg, is one reason he loves the rally and avoids the motion sickness that affects a lot of co-drivers.
