Auckland's Eddie Freeman has unofficially broken the New Zealand land speed record with an average speed of 355.485km/h.
Freeman hit a maximum speed of 383km/h in his modified Lamborghini Superleggera during the run at Ohakea Air Base, his spokesman Caleb Brown told NZ Newswire.
"There's obviously a celebratory bit of carry-on. It's pretty awesome to be here," Mr Brown said.
Freeman had several warm-up runs over the course before succeeding on what was his fifth or sixth run on the course.
The record is based on an average speed of two 1km runs in opposite directions and Motorsport New Zealand representatives were there to measure the speeds.
"He spent the course of the day just building up. Every run got faster and faster," Brown said.
"At one stage we were getting 370km/h in one direction but the car was starting to heat up and the turbo wasn't giving him the boost he needed on the run back.
"So he had to do quite a bit in terms of cooling the car down and some tuning, and went from there."
Freeman's average speed of 355.485km/h was comfortably faster than the previous record of 348.23km/h, set in 1996 in a Porsche 911 Turbo by Owen Evans, father of current GP3 World Champion Mitch Evans.
Owen Evans almost lost his life 16 years ago on a rural road in Reporoa after crashing trying to inch his record higher.
Freeman was hoping to slightly modify his car to have a go at the land speed record for a road-registered car later on Saturday.
News home