Sakercars.com.au had their first race at Winton Motor Raceway in Australia on the 30-4-05 This NZ and Australian built car, owned by John Biddlecombe of NSW, was driven by V8 supercar driver Luke Youlden. The Saker was invited to run in the new sports and GT series, formally Nations Cup - Intermarque Challenge series.
Luke qualified the Saker two-tenths under the current Nations Cup lap record held by Paul Stokel in the black Lamborghini Diablo R.

On raceday Luke and the Saker set fastest lap in each of their races, but finished in fourth and second, due to a mysterious misfire. Top finishes were Porsche GT2R and GT3 cup.
Almost a perfect debut in Australia. Luke commented that the Saker was probably the best handling car straight out of the box that he had ever driven.

The new 3L 6 cylinder boxer powered Saker RSC was put through its paces both on the road and at Taupo race track recently by TV NZ's "AA Torque Show". The test driver of the day was former world superbike front runner and British touring car driver Aaron Slight. He loved the car, particularly the handling. One thing that they especially commented on, was that the Saker had noticeably more leg room than most other mid engined cars.

The Saker RSC has leather trim, climate control, high quality audio plus other creature comforts. This model is only available through Extreme Vehicles.
www.sakerextreme.com

Sakermotorsport.com in the USA entered an SVS in the 25 hour race at Thunderhill in January 2005. This was the first competition for the USA built cars and they were under pressure to make the starting grid on time. They qualified 65th and after 15 laps the Saker was up to 5th. This would have been one busy driver. Everything was going well and running near the front of the field until around half distance when mechanical problems ended their run. This was a steep learning curve and a lot of knowledge and experience was gained for future events of this type.

Saker had some good success in this series, winning several races. Full results are not yet available.

Saker Motorsport Europe in the Zandvoort 500km race in Holland.

An impressive display by Saker Motorsport Europe at a motorsport show in Holland.

The following weekend, again at Zandvoort, Robert Dollee entered his Saker SVS in a round of the Dutch National GT championship. He managed to get a podium finish, first time out, 3rd overall and 2nd in the GT class. We are all very excited and will be smiling for weeks.

Great News!!!! Saker Motorsport Europe had its debut at Zandvoort, Holland in April. 3 cars were entered in a Dutch sports car and GT race, in a two x 2 hour race programme. Their main competition were Porsche GT3's, 911's and BMW's. Sakers finished 1st, 2nd and 7th, after a visit to the gravel trap. The drivers were Dick van Dijk, Robert Dollee and B Kemp. All Sakers were powered by Subaru 2L turbo WRX engines and 2WD tranz.

Two Sakers competed in the Sports Car Assoc. races at Manfeild on 3-4-04, at the Central Districts Classic Car meeting. I had a good day, picking up some good placings including a 1st. I received a clout in the left side in the last race. Through quite a bit of damage to repair, I did manage to finish the race, however. Alan also had a good day, getting onto the pace quickly. We had a good battle in the last race of the day, which he won. Now I will have to find some more speed.

Alan had his first day testing in his beautiful black and green V8 machine at Manfeild in January. 'Absolutely loved it'. There was only time for a few laps. He had a couple of minor gremlins, tyre deflate and clutch not right. These were soon put right and had another session at Taupo shortly after.

Race Report

A year has past since we last competed at the excellent MG Whittaker's Classic meeting. The 2002 event was the enjoyable, well run meeting that we have become used to. The busy year producing cars at the factory meant that there was no time this year for further development on our Sprint, other than altering the roll bar, to meet "Motorsport New Zealand's" height requirements.

The weather for this event was cold with some rain. Our qualifying sessions were in 2 groups. Mine was slightly wet and on slicks. Saturday, I qualified 16th on the grid for our 1st race with a dry track. After the first lap I had improved to around 8th. With 2 laps to go I caught up to Philip Mules in the Viper. We had a good tussle but I lacked the outright grunt to make a pass. Towards the end of this race we were both passed by Ray Williams in the spotty 700+ horsepower GT2 Porsche. Ray had started from the back of the grid.

The 2nd race was also dry. I started in position 2 but had a bad start, (stalled). I got going last and the length of the main straight behind but managed to work my way back up to around 6th.

Sunday's 1st race was wet and all were on wet tyres. From grid 3 I got another bad start, 6th into the first corner. I managed to progress up to 2nd behind the Viper when he had a loose. This put me in the lead, only to be blasted back to 2nd by "Racing Ray" in that awesome spotty GT2 Porsche.

Race 2 on Sunday was dry but cold, another bad start. I suspect that standard engine mounts need replacing with more solid ones. I worked my way back up to 2nd behind the Viper, were we finished. Ray did not start in this race.

Over all this was a good result and a lot of fun for us. I am looking forward to the engine upgrade due in the new year. 165 kilowatts is just not enough.

The official results for this meeting are due out soon. These can be seen on www.mgcarclub.org.nz

Bede gave his V8 SV1 its first run in September. He was very pleased with the shake-down session and experienced no mechanical problems. His team based in Wellington, should be a regular sight at motor racing circuits this season.

Some recent developments are a new front splitter with improved air exit ducts behind front wheels, an adjustable rear defuser to be run with a reduced area of rear wing.

More testing shortly. We expect to have to run the car stiffer with less ground clearance to gain full advantage of these changes.

At this stage of development and competing in various races, we believe that the Saker concept is working very well.

To produce a sports-car that performs well both on the road and in competition, looks the part and is affordable, has been a challenge.

The recent change to Subaru boxer turbo type engines has been the correct one in my view. The envisaged advantages of low centre of gravity, lightweight, good power output in standard form and availability. The higher crankshaft centre and deep sump design of the boxer engine enables us to avoid the necessity of a complicated and expensive dry-sump system. We have not suffered any oil pick-up problems during high G-force cornering.

Another important consideration is that the engine, tranzaxle, halfshafts, rear hubs with vented discs and efficient handbrake calliper are all Subaru and bolt together. This works well and avoids adaptors and special axles etc, being required.

We use a Link management system to run the engine. These are used extensively on Subaru engines, they are easily installed, fully adjustable and reasonably priced.

The Saker SVS uses all Japanese hubs, stearing and brakes etc. A change from the earlier SV1 which were fitted with Torana - Sunbird components. The brakes we are using in competition at present are all production parts, (apart from pads), these are quite a small diameter to fit into a 13" wheel and are working extremely well in a sprint race situation. For maximum braking the discs and calipers are able to be replaced with larger competition units, in conjunction with larger diameter rims.

The SVS space-frame chassis differs only in minor detail from the well proven SV1 unit. It features an improved geometry, fabricated suspension which is now fully rose-jointed. The roll-over bar has been redesigned to meet MANZ requirements.

The change to front radiatior has proven successful. We are using the side air intakes for liquid intercoolers etc., at present.

The fibreglass body has changed very little apart from an air outlet in the front. A new front under-tray is being evaluated currently. A revised rear wing and under body is planed in the near future. These changes will be suitable for both road and track.

With our local orders plus the first Saker to Europe is due to start off-season track testing, the future for Saker Cars looks rather exciting.

The Whittaker's Classic meeting at Manfeild is always an excellent event, run by the Wellington MG Car Club.

We ran the Saker Sprint in the Super GT and High Horsepower class, so were able to run race tyres. (The only change from road trim.)

With this type of event, the competition varied greatly, everything from Porsche 911 GT2, Viper, TVR Tuscan, Tranz-Am Camaro, Mustang's and many more.

Our placing's weren't to bad for this type of field, a 2nd. 4th and 5th and a best lap time of 1m13.18sec. This time was 4th fastest out of about 250 entrants. (Not official.) The cars that were quicker were the Porsche 911 GT2 by 2 seconds and the 2 Tranz-Am type Camaro's by less than 1 second.

I believe we can improve our speed considerably when we start developing our engine to produce more power than its current standard form.

We had made some small aerodynamic changes for this meeting, but with so much traffic in each race, these being mainly reversed grids and handicap races, I only had 2 or 3 clear laps and was not able to fully evaluate these changes. Perhaps a little more grip in the rear would make the balance pretty damn good.

I thoroughly enjoyed the close racing and have postponed retiring from racing for at least another year.

We gave the Saker Sprint a run at Pukekohe on 23-9-01 at the Formula 5000 Festival.

This was the first outing since replacing the RS Legacy engine with a WRX EJ20 Subaru motor. Still in standard form.

We were assigned races with the F5000 cars, along with a Can-am McLaren, Formula Brabham and Formula Pacific Ralt RT4's., etc. As the only road-going car (apart from slicks), we were a bit out of our depth.

As I hadn't driven at Pukekohe since 1981, I was keen to check out the changes to the circuit and found very little difference apart from being much less bumpy. I believe we could run the car considerable stiffer at this track.

We finished as expected in this field, well down and as we had a boost loss problem, (this would happen 3 or 4 times down the back straight). Although our lap times were not great, 1m8s, I did enjoy driving on one of my favourite circuits for the first time in 20 years.