He's just turned 75, but there's no stopping racing car driver ‘Pk Bonz' from taking to the track again this Sunday.
There's even a bar named for him at the Waihi Beach Dirt Track club where the social side is just as important as the racing.
An original member of the club back when it started around 1996, local Waihi butcher ‘Pk Bonz' – real name John Evetts - started rally car racing in 1974.
'In 1978 I went to speedway,” says John. 'My first car was a Mark 1 Escort.”
He recalls the beginnings of the Waihi Beach Dirt Track.
'From what I can remember, where the track is was quite a big gully. People running the quarry had a lot of fill that couldn't be used, and that was carted up and dumped in the gully and formed quite a nice piece of flat area.
'One of the boys had a car that was going to be buried under all the rubble. They started driving around in circles and hello we've got a bit of a racetrack. It just sort of went from there with about four or five cars.”
John was one of the first to get a car on the track.
'Dennis Boyd who owns Beach Contractors built the track from day one. I knew him cos he'd pulled in to get some parts off me. I asked him what he wanted the parts for and he said: ‘for my race car and we're racing this afternoon' so I queried him whereabouts and why and how.
'He said: ‘we're running at one o'clock, you better come and have a look'. I was working, and pushed all the meat away into the chiller, shot up to this track. He threw a helmet at me and said to me: ‘take my car out', I said: ‘no way'. He called me not a nice name and I said: ‘give me that helmet I'm going to go and drive your car' and I did. And I won my first race.”
During the following fortnight John found a car, put a roll cage in it and was back for the next meeting.
'I don't think I've missed a race meeting since. Might have missed one.”
Race days are held fortnightly from about Labour weekend to Queen's Birthday weekend, with some meetings away, but on average around 14 races a season are held there. Similar to the Waiuku and Meremere clubs, the racing is clockwise.
'We quite often get some of the Baypark cars and some of the boys from Huntly, they come over and race with us.”
Stock cars, saloon cars, six shooters, mini stocks – they all race there. There are classes for V8s, six-cylinders, two and four litre, a production class, mechanics class, junior class, mini-stock class and an open class for the six shooters.
'And there's the ladies class which my missus drives in. Chris, otherwise known as ‘Mrs Pk Bonz' [Pork Bones] – she's been racing up here with us since day one.”
'We can have up to 30 or 40 cars at a meeting. The races are all six or eight laps. It depends how grumpy the flag man is on how many laps we do, we might have done ten and he's thought we've only done eight.”
The club leases the land off local farmer Brownie, who helped build the track and was one of the original racers. It has a million dollar view overlooking the beach.
'It's the best view any speedway track has got in the country.”
Racing starts at 11am on Sunday, February 14, at the Waihi Beach Dirt Track. The Pk Bonz bar and food caravan is open all day, cash only. Gate fee is $5.