Liam Lawson, Mad Mike & Shane Van Gisbergen go Paddock Bashing • Red Bull Rural Rumble 2026

So today has been all about Kiwi paddock hacking, rural rumble. So we've had the stadium truck, my Pro-Lite, which we raced down here, actually won the short course New Zealand champs in that day. It's actually the first and only time I've driven that truck. So it was cool to hear it from the outside. We've had SVG and Liam, so we've been battling it out all day from haybale challenges, racing lawnmowers, some drift challenges, but it's cool for, you know, for us we're all on such a hectic schedule all year round. Three Kiwis that don't spend much time in New Zealand to just get together, hang out and just paddock bash. Well for us, obviously paddock bashing and then having a stadium truck, my discipline is usually drifting on tarmac, but we race in New Zealand, we've done a little bit off-road and so why not bring out a full pro-spec stadium truck to tear up some grass. And it's always fun, you know, all of us are in a pretty hectic schedule, chasing our careers, whether it's Formula 1, NASCAR, myself obviously film shoots and drifting, and it's always cool to kind of, you can let go and kind of, it's like relaxing but it's like freestyle, it's a lot of fun. They're so different, like driving a lawnmower or whatever, you just jump in and go and yeah, that's what we've grown up doing I guess. I think Rural Rumble is obviously a very organic Kiwi way of racing, we've all grown up driving in paddocks and doing stuff like this and to have three of us drivers who are never really together at the same time, all be here and doing it together, setting these unique challenges that are unique to New Zealand and to us as Kiwis growing up here and being racing drivers, that was I guess the idea and what we've produced today. It's very organic, it's something that's, as Mike said, it's very rare that we're together so to be here racing each other, obviously we're on camera but for us it's enjoyable, we get to race around and it's very relaxed, it's good fun. I honestly was most excited about driving the Pro 3 truck, I've done it in sim racing a little bit but I've never driven one in real life, never really done much operating stuff and then as well to have a, I've never driven a rotary like that either so it's quite mad how they drive, how quickly they respond, quicker than my car which is very impressive. It's as Kiwi as it gets, rotary in a field. Just going to get this beautiful F1 suit a little bit dirty mate. Oh it smells amazing here. You just need the R&A, we can put some R&A stickers. So far we did a couple of laps testing and then did a hot lap in the Pro 2 truck where we had to try and aim for a target which I was the only one who missed so I made sure that when we did the next target practice drifting I managed to get all those. You know I think the highlight for me was actually seeing Liam like just crush the drifting to be honest like coming from a Formula One driver that's you know he's trained his whole life to keep the car in a straight edge on the rails like a slot car set, you know SVGs, he's done rally, he's come from motocross, he's done a lot of back, he's done drifting, he's podiumed here in New Zealand doing drifting so I knew Shane was going to drift really well. I think me being a person that's into obviously cars and racing, it's what I've done my whole life to just do racing for fun, obviously we spend a lot of time, everything's very high pressure, always performance based and that's always sort of behind what we're doing so to do stuff for pure enjoyment like today, the competition's still there because we're drivers, we obviously have that but it's exciting to be able to do it more on a fun level.