MASTERTON truck racer Malcolm Little has two secret weapons for the Timaru round of the New Zealand championship on March 19 - 20.
One is a second truck, the Transport Diesel Marine Kenworth formerly driven by Garry Davies.
The other is one of the up and coming drivers of British truck racing, Mat Summerfield.
Little met Summerfield during a visit to England a couple of years ago, and the pair became friends.
The Englishman, 29, expressed interest in racing in New Zealand but couldn't afford to bring the Seddon Atkinson Strato T6 he drove to 5th in the British series to New Zealand with him.
Buying a truck here was also beyond his budget, so he and Little came up with the idea of joint ownership and a team approach to racing in New Zealand.
The Kenworth became available and Little's team, Boss Racing, snapped it up, beating the Porter truck racing team to the deal.
"Porters used to have two trucks and it worked brilliantly for them," said Little.
The Kenworth runs the same engine as Little's Freightliner but it is not as fully developed.
"If there's time we'll put in a camshaft that will bring it up somewhere near mine," said Little. "It's got all the good gear and it's on the minimum weight, so it should go all right."
The Kenworth has spent a number of years out in the open, so Little plans to spend the next few weeks tidying it up.
He's looking forward to racing with Summerfield, a mechanic and businessman in Burton-on-Trent.
Summerfield started truck racing in 1999 in a truck bought from current British No 2 Steve Horne. He built his second truck himself and came off on Church Corner at Thruxton, smashing it up!
Going for third time lucky, Summerfield rebuilt the truck ready for the 2004 season, in which he was 5th.
The Englishman has visited New Zealand but never raced here. He lists his hobbies as restoring old vehicles and socialising. Racing in Britain is becoming very serious, he says, and he's looking forward to the laidback Kiwi approach to the sport.
Little suffered problems with his new limited-slip diff last time out, but that has been sorted and he's looking forward to mixing it with the other front-runners.
Hopefully, having a team-mate will give him the edge he needs in the Tasman Challenge meet in Timaru, where some top Australian trucks will be racing.
Another big change in Malcolm Little's life is the purchase of his own business in Upper Hutt.
"We still live here (Wairarapa) but we work in Wellington," he said. The company, Boss Transport Repairs, not surprisingly has its focus on trucks and buses.
Little, a diesel engineer, formerly ran the workshop at Tranzit, which was also one of his sponsors.
"I was 14 years with Tranzit," he said, "and I enjoyed it ? they looked after me very well.
"But it was time to do something else," he said.
Second truck for Little team
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