Forbes' Justin Roylance will take the wheel of a brand new for the 2025 Sprint Jet world series after incredibly walking away from a crash in a New Zealand race over the holiday period.
A steering failure just past the finish line saw Justin and his daughter Macey, in the Outlaw V8 Superboat, go flying 44m through the air on December 27.
Thankfully, they were able to walk away from the crash but the boat was destroyed less than a month out from Justin's planned world series campaign.
The boat Justin races with navigator Tracey Little had been shipped to New Zealand in readiness for the Jet Sprint world series events on January 26 and February 1, but the family received an invitation to spend the festive season in New Zealand and decided to do that.
Justin, with daughter Macey alongside him, was having a successful day on the water track at Whanganui, and were competing in the second last eliminator when the crash happened.
"We left the track at exactly 107 km/hr," Justin said.
"By the time we came to a stop we'd gone just over 50m, in the air for 44m, we had elevated around 5.5 metres in heigh to clear that fence."
Fortunately, they landed clear of spectators.
The two were sore and bruised, Macey taken to hospital as a precaution but given the all clear.
"We still ended up with third place, which is bittersweet," Justin said.
"There's excellent safety features - the boats are extremely safe.
"We use a six-point harness, special seats, all the best safety gear we can get - as you can see, it saved our lives."
They have an understanding of the failure but after 18 months of fine tuning the boat and their preparations for the world series they're starting from scratch.
Fortunately, Justin's been able to source another hull - it was shipped from Australia and he flew in to New Zealand to meet it.
Speaking to the Advocate in January, he and the team were working all hours to put the engine in it and prepare it.
"It's been a mammoth effort," Justin said.
The boat was in the water by the end of last week and within weeks, he hopes to be behind the wheel to launch his world series campaign.
"It's going to be quite a big event because we haven't had a world series since 2018," Justin said.
Justin started jet sprint racing in 2013 and has an Australian championship to his name, he'd love to taste success in this upcoming series.
"We placed third in Round 1 of the (2018) world series in Australia, but in Round 2 we had an engine failure, that put us out of contention. So this year we're obviously going to go as hard as we can."
That said, starting with a brand new boat is going to be a challenge.
Team Outlaw is also currently second in the Australian championships with two rounds to race on the other side of the world championships.