Standing at 6 foot 7inches tall, young Southland rally driver David Holder isn't exactly vertically challenged and with two podium finishes from his first two rallies competed, Holder is quickly showing that his driving talent isn't lacking in stature either.

The 21year old from Invercargill was launched onto the rallying scene after becoming a finalist in the Rally New Zealand Rising Stars Scholarship, and while not pocketing the $50,000 prize, Holder walked away from the weekend with confidence and contacts that set him in good stead for his upcoming events.

Armed with this experience, Holders' focus turned to developing the skills needed to make it to the top level of rallying. His career kicked off to a great start with the Canterbury Rally in June , driving a Toyota Levin 2wd car with his brother James in the co-drivers seat, Holder improved with every kilometer and finished with a solid 3rd place in class.

Top NZV8 racing team John McIntyre Racing launched a new look for their V8 Ford for their fifth season in New Zealand's premier racing championship.

The striking black, white and green livery was revealed for the first time at this weekend’s Speedshow in Auckland as the two-time NZV8 championship-winning team confirms a number of new sponsors.

“It’s the most striking livery in our five year history,” says driver John McIntyre. “One of the great things about our sponsor family this season is that several companies have complementing colours and this helped us create a really cohesive look. The black, white and green colours are really strong and our race-winning car certainly won’t be missed by V8 fans and competitors this season!”

New Zealand racing driver Matt Halliday has powered his Giltrap Racing Porsche 911 GT3 to a well deserved 9th place in Round 7 of the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup held at Germany’s Hockenheim circuit on Sunday night.

Halliday was a star of the race after having to battle his way up from 16th grid position following an initial set back in the exceptionally close qualifying session.

With weather conditions varying over the weekend, the race was eventually run on a dry track which again showed Halliday to have good racing pace. Qualifying was always going to be a challenge owing to the fierce competitiveness of such a star-studded field with the top 21 cars all lapping within eight tenths of a second of the pole position time.

Halliday was well placed throughout despite the dampish conditions making use of the track edges extremely difficult.

Gore driver Andrew Graves was winner of the 2010 Catlins Coast Rally on Saturday. In doing so he became the only person to win the event as both a driver and a co-driver. In 2005 he was in the co-drivers seat when good friend Derek Ayson took the victory.

Graves was stoked, describing it as his "best win ever." "I'm absolutely chuffed. It's an old car but this is a well deserved result for the whole team. Lindsay Tressler spent the last two weeks preparing the car and it ran faultlessly. It was very frosty in Special Stage 2 and in the fourth stage we lost the back shock absorber so for the last few stages we had no shock. That made the car a bit indecisive!" However there would be no stopping Graves as he won the event from fellow Gore driver Paul Cross and co-driver Michael Kelly with Steve Wellington and Hudson Biggs of Dunedin third.