🏅MADMAC - Mad Mike's MADMAC: Rotary Drift McLaren | Haltech Heroes

Alright, what's up? I'm Mad Microdot. We're out here at SEMA with Haltech. We've got Mad Mac, which we've been doing some filming around Las Vegas. But yeah, for me, I got into drifting from motocross actually, chasing the dream. I grew up with my mum. Mum loved horses. And I was fortunate enough that she was always at the farm riding horses. So whether I was playing around with rodeo control cars, riding little clapped out old farm bikes or thrashing old Corollas and 323s. But yeah, just always chasing the dream and what's next. And yeah, here we are now with a bloody rotary powered McLaren. So I think like the teenage years and being around motorbikes and being in the like around farm and gravel roads and grass paddocks, like drifting was just like something we did. We never knew there was going to be a sport for it. It was just something that was for us the funnest way to drive a car, which is kind of like out of control, but in control. Yeah, bouncing around doing half the motocross tracks, hitting jumps in these cars. And it was just really the like with a lot of injuries I had doing the motocross. Got into freestyle motocross. Again, just even more injuries again. That was when I discovered the Japanese DVDs with the D1GP, the Japanese drifting. And I was like, man, I've got to do this. And that's what made me really transition into the sport of drifting. So my first car, like what we did, like Skid Fest was a huge thing in New Zealand. So it was like a burnout comp. It was like a 20 by 20 meter concrete burnout pad. Some guys would come in and they'd just kind of do a static burnout. You know, who could pop the tires the fastest with the most smoke. I'd kind of come in and work the whole pad, you know, right out from barrier to barrier. But I was doing this in old 70s Mazdas, all rotary powered stuff. Bongo vans, RX3s. Yeah, when I discovered the drifting on the track was like this was the next thing. So my first car, we sold that burnout car I had then. My wifey, Toni, she sold her car she had at the time, which was a Mercedes. We had obviously dropped out. We put a Haltech in that. We put a Lexus V8. We had twin turbo, airbag. So we sold both these cars to be able to fund Madbull, which is a car I still have now, which was the naturally aspirated four rotor. Back then it was a three rotor, digi camo and just started campaigning in the toughest level of competition in New Zealand. And very fast, I managed to get up to California for D1GP World All Stars. So this project, like many, has kicked off from Goodwood Festival of Speed. You know, the people you meet, the entertainment factor. And I think like for us, it's the ultimate of all the events and always priority one. It's about how to execute and build something. And I don't know, it always seems like a ridiculous time frame. But yeah, I met Dean Lanzante at Goodwood Festival of Speed last year. Dean's responsible for building some of the world's wildest road converted P1 GTRs. And we were just talking about crazy projects and what would we do next. At that point, actually in that discussion, I didn't know him for the McLarens that he was building. I knew him for the Sand Scorcher replica that he built a full size version of one of those Tamiya radio control cars that I really wanted when I was young. But mum couldn't afford it. He built a full size one and actually revealed it at Goodwood Festival of Speed and drove it up the tarmac driveway with paddle tyres. It had the like big massive full size controller as part of the display. And so we were talking about that. He asked what my next dream project would be. Well, this is it. I literally pitched the idea of getting a P1 GTR. I wanted to use the GT3 roll cage. At that point, I hadn't really talked about doing a rotary engine swap. It was more so about building the wildest McLaren and telling the Bruce McLaren story. Because 90% of the world know McLaren as just a high end, you know, British supercar. Where McLaren was, you know, Bruce was a fellow Kiwi much like myself. Chasing dreams, you know, him doing Formula One, doing, you know, Can-Am, just racing at the highest level as another Kiwi. Doing engine swaps, he was running Tags, he was running Renaults, he was running Mercedes. All these different engines. For me to be able to tell that story and build this crazy drift car. It wasn't until three weeks into this project that was when we discovered that a rotary could be an option because of the size. And just because of the amount of fault codes, the amount of people saying that they'd already done everything to the V8 factory McLaren that was in this car. There's already bolt-on turbo kits. There's already bolt-on, like, a lot of stuff. And even the factory ECU that was in this car just kept giving us issues. Like with fault codes. You know, take the steering wheel off, we couldn't start the thing. So I was like, we need to change the brain. So we decided to put the Haltech Nexus R5 into this car. Literally stripped every single wire out of this thing. And now we have, you know, created a lot more work putting the rotary into it. Gives us now full confidence of this car when we're lining up for a demo or a film shoot. When they're calling action, helicopters in the sky, we have confidence now with this car. I don't know, wiring's way out of my league in terms of a time frame perspective. You'd be better off to strip it and start again. Yeah, I mean, to have Mitch Smith come into the picture, you know, and be able to come down and first, he actually first looked at the car when we were talking about the V8. And just literally swapping out the whole ECU to the Nexus R5. Rerunning all the wiring. And then it was funny because they came to New Zealand for the beach hop as well. So that at the end of their trip, following day, we had then decided to put a rotary in it. So it was a fan had sort of commented on one of my Instagram posts saying, oh man, you should put a rotary in this thing. And then it was a hater said that he wouldn't. And then that really just triggered the, actually, why wouldn't we? So I called Mitch back and he said, yeah, totally doable. Obviously, he had just looked over the entire car. For us, it just made it that much more simple because we knew exactly what to do. Obviously, just with all the wiring and everything needed to be done on the car rather than kind of splicing it outside and on the bench. Because with this car, it's totally different with all the engine and everything being down the back of the car. So everything's split a lot different way than it would be in your traditional car with the engine up the front. Yeah, so the name for this car, Mad Mac. I mean, it comes pretty simple as obviously with Bruce McLaren and this, you know, trying to be the maddest Mac out there. The thing is now that people that don't know me are all calling me Mad Mac. I'm like, no, I'm Mike, the car's Mac. Or maybe that's the mad part of Mike. I don't know. But yeah, it's telling that Bruce McLaren story, man. It's like, you know, Bruce was a fellow Kiwi chasing dreams. You know, taking on the world's best from a little country that a lot of people don't even know where New Zealand is. So it's been a really cool, you know, first kind of six months with this car since its reveal. It's been to a lot of countries already. And there's a lot more stuff already on the go for this car next year in 2025. Straight after this, we've got an amazing opportunity where we're going to be doing a drift demonstration at the Formula One here in Las Vegas. So I think it's going to be definitely a freaking bucket list, highlight milestone moment for the Mad Mike Motorsport team, for sure, to have us there and doing a Formula One demo. But not just so for myself and our brands, but for our sport to be able to showcase just how fast it is. You know, a lot of people I've been asked to do a lot of demonstrations over the years where it's like come to the Formula One or come to a V8 supercars event. You know, New Zealand, Australia, V8 supercars is pretty much the pinnacle when it comes to circuit racing. And they'll say, yep, we've got the side road or a car park where we've set up a little track and I just turn them down because, you know, for me, showcasing drifting in a car park, like that's not drifting. Like if you want to, you know, people that have not seen us on a track that might come along and be like, oh, so that's what drifting is about. It's like, nah, man, we're drifting faster than half the race cars. You know, most of the categories we're doing faster entry speeds, yet we're fully sideways waving to the kids on the fence. And so for me, it's also about elevating the sport of drifting and levelling up, you know, the whole industry. What Mitch had done, like even with rewriting the dash for the IC7 dash to be able to have all the camo and the background cycle, the logos, when you turn the ignition on, just lots of little things of where we're able to do logos and all that stuff was pretty cool. Like for us to be the first ones to reveal that, a lot of people have the IC7 dash, but then by the amount of comments that were like, oh, what's that upgrade? Like, how can I do that? Because already stock, you have a lot of customisation that you can personally do. Even my son, Link, he's got the same IC7 dash with the Nexus R5 in his drift car. And he was able to colour match, like so it's purple and teal and pink. So it matches all his livery. The toughest part of the build, I guess, or the biggest obstacle is definitely the timelines that we shoot for on these things. But I'm the one that sets these timelines, right? I like, I work with the best brands, the best people to be able to make it happen. And I've been doing it for a long time now that I have the confidence that, you know, they all go well over and beyond. And plus a lot of the stuff is not off the shelf. You know, they're like, it might be something that they're developing to be on the shelf. So we'll like reveal it on this car and then it is available. So it's awesome to have that. But at the same time, it's having the confidence in our brand partners that we, you know, have the confidence with their brand new product. We're the first ones to try it. Essentially the guinea pigs to do this, but having that confidence and then coming out and having the results only shows that we're working with the best brands in such a ridiculous timeframe. And I feel like without a timeline, without a, you know, that's why a lot of projects don't get done. You've got to also remember, we're also working on multiple projects at a time because we've got Link's cars going on now of Link, you know, even my daughter with her go karts and stuff. And then I've got multiple projects always on the go, even Kawato-san in Japan. Like right now, Kawato is actually just finishing the new 2025 Mazda MX-5 for Link that he's going to be showcasing next year. And so he's revealing it this weekend at the Mazda Fan Fest. So Nexus R5, 2025 Mazda MX-5 platform, Nash Flash rated six rotor. You know, whilst we're working on one thing, there's always something else that's going on in the background. Man, the highlight has been definitely like just how well this thing drives. I think this last week, we've actually been able to have it on the Formula One circuit here in Vegas and been able to push it really fricking hard, like really hard with some of the corners and made a bad execute. You know, we're doing a bit of a film shoot. So usually the film stuff, what we've been doing has been quite tight and technical. You know, obviously Goodwood is the best event, but the worst event to reveal a car at. But the best because of the exposure, the entertainment value, but the worst because drifting up Lord March's driveway, it is so narrow and so tight. Our cars get lower and wider every year. So I'm only making the job harder for myself. I would say just, actually also just how well this car rips. Like man, we're swinging full backwards entries on this thing. We're running the Toyo Proxes Sport 2, which is a new tyre. However, it is a super hard compound tyre compared to the R888 Drift that we would usually run in competition that allows the car to be able to do the ridiculous and aggressive big entries. How this thing reacts and responds as it is, has just been absolutely incredible. Now, most people would, most people say like, oh man, it must be a terrible drift car with all the weight down the back. Well, all the pro cars now, we're trying to re-weight them because we want the more grip, you know, like a lot of people when they look at drifting, it's like, oh, you just want a car with heaps of horsepower and no grip. But it's quite the opposite because as a driver, you hit the one corner, the next lap, you want to hit that same corner a little bit faster. Then it gets to the point, it's like faster, more angle. Now you're like, you're doing that, you're falling off the track. So you just, you're chasing more grip. So whether it's tyre pressures or shocks, tyre compounds, and now the scariest part about drifting is how fast the technology is excelling, whether it's the suspension, the tyres, the engines, the performance. Because now as a driver, the cars are just getting so hooked up and so fast and so scary to drive. If you're like myself that loves that fear and adrenaline, like that balance, it's very addictive. It's a dangerous game to play with, I guess. But it's, yeah, it's definitely the craziest addiction. Yeah, so this build, you're always like, what would you change? How's it been? And I guess like every time we're running this car, we're still developing it, you know, with little things, whether it's air temps, intake air temps, but we're able to data all of this, everything on the car, we're able to data through the Haltech. So I can literally do a lap, even though we're calling action and we're like, got to be on the grid, we've got helicopters in the sky, you know, the production team, there's a lot of money that goes into the productions. We still have, you know, to be able to have the confidence with our parts, to be able to do little changes, you know, and the car has worked absolutely flawlessly, but you know, little things like we had oil pressure issues and a lot of that came because usually with a drift car, the engine's up the front and when you think of the pendulum effect with the engine up the front is nowhere near as aggressive as everything being down the back. So you're getting everything thrown around a lot more violent and how I picked that up was one, the data, we were seeing oil pressure drop and so we were like, how are we seeing oil pressure drop with the parts and components we're using in like the dry sump setup? The thing was, as I also said when I first came in from driving, I was like, man, it feels so like tame the car and that's because this car I sit so far forward on full lock, the front wheels are actually riding by my calves, where usually you're sitting so far back on the rear wheel. Instantly, I have that same feeling where the motor where it would be sitting up the front is not getting that full effect, that dynamic force and, you know, from the flicks from lock to lock. So that's where, you know, to be able to find that data. But now, like I said, there's little things we're changing, but this thing has been working flawless and yeah, I wouldn't change a thing. The specs of Mad Max, so essentially it started as a P1 GTR number 45. It was a 650 GT3, which we used all the monocoque and roll cage from the FIA. Lanzante, the Lanzante obviously builds a lot of P1 GTRs, does the road conversion. So the subframe, the monocoque, the rear subframe, a lot of that is identical between all three platforms. However, when the car was delivered to us, I had no idea what was P1 GTR, what was the GT3. The final specs that have turned out on this car, of course, are the rotary. It runs a three rotor, so it's a 20B long crank. We run, it's a Mad Lab built motor, so we've built it all in house at my shop back down in New Zealand. We've used the Bullet Pro side plates, which are a bullet side plate, which are really nice. They have a plate like the facing that is actually bolted in. So that means we're able to change for different port shapes, port designs, or the bridge port. However, we decided to go peripheral port on this. So we run a full blank plate on that side plate that runs massive, massive peripheral ports. When it comes into a full bullet intake, which was custom designed with a taper. So it's got, instead of doing your normal plenum with a single throttle body, we've done more like an NA setup where it runs three individual EFI hardware, 55 mil throttle bodies, just because it looks freaking cool and it sounds better. And for that way, we're able to do a full tapered length. So from that, we had an 80kg bullet block that was then machined into our intake plenum that fully tapers from the RAM tubes. So from the RAM tubes all the way down to the peripheral port, it's a perfect taper to get the best performance. PWR cooling, so everything custom designed. So we literally, same as all our other projects, we custom draw what we want. This one, we've put all the oil coolers on the left side. So that's for engine. We've also got the transmission cooling on that side. The rear on the right is all engine cooling. Then up the front, of course, we've got the big intercooler. Oh no, actually intercooler is down the back as well. So we run a water cooled intercooler, which is down the back. Up the front, we have another radiator for engine cooling. And then we have two radiators up the front, which is cooling for the water cooled intercooler. So just the cooling system alone, everything custom hand built by PWR. Like I say, just from a simple sketch. We moved to transmission. Transmission is X-TRAC 6-speed sequential. Custom clutch, which is like a McLaren quadruple plate carbon clutch, which we've modified to fit. So it still runs a McLaren bow housing. And then we've made an adapter plate, a billet adapter plate, which makes the rear plate of the rotor engine up to the X-TRAC gearbox. That's all air shifted. So through the Haltech Nexus R5, that's what manages this entire car. Every single sensor or the fuel pump, all the lights, the wipers, the entire car now has been stripped of all the factory wiring and the factory McLaren ECU, and is solely run by a Nexus R5. It's PDM on the front and then PDM down the back as well. Fuel system is all radium. So we run the factory GT3 tank, which when we've modified the top cover, which then holds the radium fuel cell. Inside, I've of course got Haltech dash. I've got a shifter off my son's simulator, which is like a Moza sequential. We've pulled that apart. We put some micro switches in it because the Haltech couldn't read, or we couldn't plug the LAN plug into the Haltech because it's like for a PC. So we put some micro switches into the shifter. We've run a plug out of that, which then plugs straight into the Haltech Nexus R5. So we're now able to electronically sequential shift the gearbox through a shifter off a simulator, which is probably my favorite part of the entire car. As crazy as this thing is, because the kids can engage with like, man, I've got the same shifter on my simulator at home, but you can buy these shifters that will plug straight in, but they're about $20,000. This thing cost me like $250 and I was able to, yeah, like I say, pull it apart, some pretty basic fabrication and then wire it up so it was able to fit and activate the shifting. So then with the Haltech, I've also got the CAN keypad, which is awesome. You can literally put everything into there. So we've got anti-lag, you know, even all the wipers, the lights, but it's so simple. Everything is right there. And yeah, easy switch. You know, with the turbo, so the 20B, three rotors, 2000cc, the turbo, we're on a Garrett G45 on it, which is their new series. This thing on about 23 pound is 1,000 horsepower at the wheel. So we first dynoed this thing, it was like 950, since just been developing, you know, through these activations and stuff, just shy of 1,000 horsepower now, but that's running a pretty low boost that we know I can actually beat on this car and the motor and not have to think about the engine at all. So with all the data that we capture, I know at 23 pound, 1,000 horsepower at the wheel, like we are safe. You know, we're running a C85 fuel for VP. We pre-mixed that with some two-stroke. But yeah, it's good power. The weight of this car is heavier than what you'd think. It's about 1,250 kg. So the entire monocoque of this car is carbon fiber. So the whole shell that I'm sitting in is carbon. The sub frames are all alloy. You know, the engine itself, all the plates are billet, you know, so there's a lot of weight taken out from the factory setup. Even the factory sub frames with all the alloy, I cut a lot of those bars out. A lot of those alloy bars in the factory sub frame, we had cut out. But it's still, I mean, it's light, but it's surprisingly heavy for what you would think when you read the specs of how it is. But when you drive it, honestly, it feels like an 800 kg go-kart with a CR500 motor in it because the power to weight is ludicrous. The grip traction levels is absolutely insane, even running like a more of a radial compound tire, which we do that because of the film shoots and the demonstrations, the tires have to last so long. If I was running a competition tire on this, we'd be taking like, you know, you get three or four corners and the tires are gone. So with a harder compound, the tires are able to last a lot longer. If we go exterior wise on the car, we worked with Muratasan at Rocket Bunny. You know, we've done some amazing projects with Muratasan from stuff like the MX-5, the RX-7, we've done multiple body kits. With that, we've just done obviously my old Mazda RX3 wagon, always working on cool stuff. And then once we kind of build these kits, whether they're then sold to the public, some of the stuff like this is obviously a bit more bespoke. So, you know, not everyone's wanting to chop up a McLaren to wide body it. But yeah, the body kit, I was fortunate enough to be able to sit down again with Muratasan, work on another project, do all the livery is done by myself. So the camo is like a signature I've run in all my liveries for all the years. Camo is something I used to do when I was young. You know, I remember guys would roll up and I've got all this colour flip paint and crazy candy paints. And all I could afford was a bunch of rattle cans from like our local Ripco. And I'd go spend, you know, 40 bucks on rattle cans and I'd paint my whole cars in camo. And so that's something that I still stick to that tradition. It's like my signature on all my cars is camo. So you'll find that in there. The wheels, we've got work wheels on the back. So Work Japan, the company as well, I've worked with for a long time through our Japan projects. They're over there. So we're able to design a CVF with a one inch concave, massive big barrels. And then the front, of course, the Rotiform aero discs. It's just a really cool style. I love to be able to run. We can change up the livery and it just suits the look of what we're going for with this car. But one of the hardest things I thought that was going to be with this car was obviously turning a road car or a GT3 car into a drift car was the fact of having no steering lock. This thing had literally like, I don't know, 10 degrees of steering lock. It was not much at all. The biggest relief was when I first pulled the wheels off the front and saw they had a double wishbone suspension. So that is exactly the same as what we're running in the MX5, the RX7, RX8. We've got a lot of technology. We've got a lot of data from all the years and all the cars we've built. So the front steering, as scary as I thought it was going to be, was actually quite a simple process. Literally building a lower control arm and an upper control arm that would then mate to a Partshot MAX FD RX7 knuckle. And then by running the Partshot MAX knuckle meant that we could literally just bolt on our Wilwood brakes. So we have a bolt-on Wilwood brake package. So we're able to straight away turn it from the center lock to a five stud Mazda RX7. Same on the back. We ran a separate caliper for the Wilwood for the hydraulic handbrake. For us, it was quite simple. Other than making mounts and fabricating arms and that sort of stuff, which is just kind of general fab, was quite a relief to go out there and drive it for the first time and just feel how responsive and crazy this thing was. This thing, we're swinging full backwards entries the other night, filming out here in Vegas on the F1 track. Before, you're obviously even at 90 degrees, you've run out of steering lock. Once you're at 90 degrees, it's more coming down to your rear setup with brakes and driving style and clutch slip. It's probably about 80 degrees, close to 80 degrees of steering lock on this thing. And it feels, like I said earlier, it feels even crazy because the full lock and the wheels actually comes up beside your leg rather than in front of your feet. So it's definitely a very different sensation of drifting. But yeah, I'm really enjoying it. It's part of my, I guess, program every single, not even every weekend, like weekdays, because weekdays, we're in different filming, so we'll be in different cars than weekends. So all the time, I'm swapping from RX8s to RX7s, MX5s, McLarens, Lambos, there's like a lot of different things. If I wanted the best chance of going to compete and being, you know, being a world champion or podium every single round, then every single one of my cars would be the same. But for me, it kind of like loses the challenge and the fun factor, the entertainment side of it and the never stop challenging. For us, it's just building bespoke, crazy conversions, whether it's an MX5, because people are like, oh, that's a freaking hairdresser's car or an RX8 because, oh, that's your mum's shopping car. And then like turning into something really cool that then people were like, oh, that's bad. You know, like the way I look at cars is they have their own personality and their own character. And I love to be able to express my own character and personality and my style through the way I build the cars and the way I drive the cars. And I feel like drifting is just the coolest sport and platform to be able to do that, whether it's competing, whether it's doing the demonstrations or whether we're doing film shoots up the world's most dangerous roads. And then, yeah, like obviously working with some of the world's biggest brands, you know, Haltech have been a huge partner of ours for a long time. Haltech literally control the brains behind every one of the cars in my fleet. Even my son's, you know, he's two drift cars now. He's revealing another one this weekend with a six rotor. So, you know, they've literally been a brand that supported me from the get go. You know, and usually like New Zealand and Australia, there's always a clash, but I feel like, you know, we've represented some of a lot of brands out of Australia as well. It's always like the Wallabies versus the All Blacks. We've won some of the biggest championships, won the Formula Drift Japan championship in 2018, which to me was one of the biggest milestone moments of my career. And to be able to do that with Haltech and the, you know, we're still running that car to this day with the same ECU, which is like the Platinum 2500. You know, so even showing that the old stuff still works, that car's in Poland. We were just competing in Drift Masters like only like two months ago. So even showing the old product is still just as good as the new. Yes, I mean, for me, it's just continue entertaining, you know, and for me, I want to really use this platform to tell the story and also inspire others to like never think anything's too big to chase. Any dream, no dream is too big to chase, man. If you've got the dream, you've got the vision. The rest of it's just a bit of hard work and determination. I never thought when I was cutting up bongo bands, putting 12As into them when I was a teenager that we'd be at a point where we're traveling the world, entertaining and building some of the world's craziest cars and chopping up multi-million dollar cars and putting rotaries in them. That's for sure. But yeah, if you've got the gene, keep chasing it full throttle. Massive shout out to Haltech and also race winning brands for having us out here at SEMA for 2024. I'm actually unfortunately going to be here for like the first two days and then I'm flying out to Japan where I've got my final round of D1GP this weekend in the wagon. Link's going to be six hours south revealing his new six rotor Mazda MX-5. And you didn't hear that if this is before the weekend. Sweet.