Budget endurance racers from all over New Zealand and Australia have spent the past week-to-10-days preparing their cars and themselves for what – for many – will turn out to be the biggest and potentially the most important of the short-form long-distance events that they have contested this year, the gala fourth and final round of the 2024 NaZCAR NZ Pro Series at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park on Saturday August 31.
After the first three rounds of the AASA-sanctioned 2024 NZ Endurance Championship title-deciding Pro Series it is still too close to call, hence the at times frantic work going on in workshops and garages up and down the country as crew members responsible for the repair & maintenance of the 60-plus cars expected to line up for the final combined 3 & 6-hour 2024 NaZCAR NZ Pro Series endurance race event back in the familiar surrounds of Hampton Downs Motorsport Park and its 2.77km National circuit this Saturday (August 31) do their thing.
“It’s definitely been on for young and old alike this past week as the blokes and blokesses who have already tasted success and who now see a NZ championship title as a distinct possibility go through their car and their processes with a fine tooth comb looking for the teeniest, tiniest advantage in either pace or reliability which could see them complete another lap or two in the race this Saturday to go from being regarded as ‘just another competitor’ to ‘bona fide NZ Endurance Championship title contender,” the man behind the series, successful motorsport entrepreneur Dr Jacob Simonsen said this week.
After the opening Round at Taupo Motorsport Park and Round 2 on the full 4km circuit at Manfeild in July, the series returned to Hampton Downs for the penultimate third round on Saturday August 10, then the fourth and gala final round, this coming Saturday, August 31.
The big news at the opening round of the 2024 NaZCAR NZ Pro Series, of course,was the introduction of a special extra race into the day’s already jam-packed programme, the Kamo Parts/ Teng Tools-backed Firecracker series.
Because the short’n sharp, first-thing-in-the-morning, ‘first-driver/car-combo-to-complete-30-laps-wins,’format of the new Kamo Parts-backed sprint race event was officially open to all-comers, the group of 26-plus starters made up of a large group of 6-Hr entrants, a smaller mix of those concentrating on the 3-hr; and four ‘independents’- who made the trip to Taupo specifically to contest the very first Kamo Parts/Teng Tools Firecracker 30.
The inaugural Kamo Parts/Teng Tools race took just under an hour to complete, and was won – by a margin of just 2.33 seconds – by meeting fresh-face Grant Stone (Team Trickle BMW 135i) from the Nissan 350Z of Northland-based outfit, Team Super Duff Racing, with V8 Ute Racing Series regular Glen Collinson, of Sheikh Racing, bringing his big, brusque Ford Falcon two-door home in third place.
Team Trickles’s Grant Stone also claimed maximum points in the second Kamo Parts/Teng Tools Firecracker (this time) 40-lap preliminary race at the third round of the 2024 Pro Series at Hampton Downs earlier this month, despite – just – being beaten to the finish line on their 40th lap by the hard-driven Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8 of Ben Van Der Wilff, one of a number of wildcard entries representing the NZ Production Car racing category which helped boost entry numbers in the early morning, sprint-style ‘warm-up race’ to over 50 cars.
Second home amongst the points scorers was Kevin Hilt’s Team Green Z Racing, third Team Brake Out Racing.
Leading home the slightly slower Rockets, meanwhile, was the Ford Falcon XR8 ute of Rnd 1 standout, Team Sheikh Racing on 39 laps, the same number as Rockets category runners-up, Team Kooters’ Scooters (BMW E46 3-Series) and one more than the third placed Team Too Much Duff
With two ‘wins’ from two starts Team Trickle Racing’s Grant Stone heads back to Hampton Downs this week favourite to claim the inaugural Kamo Parts/Teng Tools Firecracker 30/40 race series winner’s crown.
Serious competition, particularly for the race winner on the day, is again expected to come from series points runner-up, Team Green Z Racing ; though with a buffer of 8 laps over the distinctive apple green Nissan Z300 in second place, and a whopping 25 lap advantage over the third placed E46 BMW 3-series 2-door of the Shiny Side squad, all Stone has to do is finish the final Kamo Parts/ Teng Tools race next Saturday morning and the inaugural series win will be his.
If only it was as easy to predict the names that will need to be added to the New Zealand Endurance Championship trophies that are up-for-grabs in the fourth and combined 3/6-hour final race of this year’s new-look, expanded NaZCAR Pro Series on Saturday.
A quick scan of the points pecking order after the first three rounds reveals a group of what you could term ‘usual suspects’atop the leaderboard – overall and in each time/speed band category.
Whether they stay there though is anyone’s guess.
‘Delighted,’ meanwhile, by the ‘overwhelmingly positive response’ to his original plan to put together a ‘slightly more serious sort of endurance race series for those with suitable cars’ to be run through the middle of the year, is the man behind it, Auckland-based motorsport event entrepreneur Dr Jacob Simonsen.
Something Dr Simonsen is particularly proud of is the fact each of the three series run so far has broken new ground in some particular way.
For the first it was simply the format, with two distances – 3 & 6 Hours – with each lap-scored independently but run concurrently.
For the second year, meanwhile, Dr Simonsen broke some – very fertile – new ground by offering bona fide AASA New Zealand Endurance Race Championship titles to the overall series winners across all eight 3&6 Hour race categories.
Then, for the third Pro Series last year, he made some subtle changes to the time ‘bands’ that split the diverse field of eligible cars into three main classes, and introduced the concept of the Firecracker 30 or 40-lap preliminary race.
This year’s NaZCAR Pro Series builds on both, the big news ahead of the opening round at Taupo in July, the addition of a completely new, stand-alone series-within-a-series based around the first-up-best-dressed Firecracker ‘first-to-30-or-40 lap’ sprint races which this year will be run at three of the four (over 30 laps at the season-opener at Taupo in July then over 40 laps each at the third & fourth rounds at Hampton Downs in August) made possible by sponsors Kamo Parts and Teng Tools.
Dr Simonsen says that the demand for places on the grid has been increasing ‘steadily at first but ‘exponentially’over the past 24 months or so,’ since he first came up with the idea of a Pro Series as a way of giving some of the more serious competitors from his novelty 24-Hour endurance events something else to do with their cars through the long winter months.
Since kicking off his own involvement in motorsport in this country with the first wacky, budget-based ‘LeMons 24 Hour’ event at the Hampton Downs circuit in northern Waikato in 2016, the new budget car/driver-friendly 3 & 6 Hr. Pro Series, Dr Simonsen has created his own self-contained long-distance racing ‘world’ for ordinary, everyday Kiwis to enjoy.
The first step in that journey was setting up a rival Governing Body of Motorsport in New Zealand (an alternative event sanctioning and driver licensing body to the incumbent, MotorSport NZ). That body, the Australasian Autosport Alliance (AASA) is a 100% NZ-owned agency of the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance, and has been successfully sanctioning, permitting, and licensing all LeMons events for Lemons cars , NaZCAR as well as Ultimate Rally Group (Targa NZ), Karting, Street Sprints/Races, Off-Road races and other motorsport events for the past six years.
The second step was to establish an ‘identity’ for the events he wanted to run here. From that desire came the NZ-focused NaZCAR brand plus the Pro Series, originally described as a ‘no-nonsense multiple distance/time endurance championship ‘without the silly themes/penalties of a typical LeMons-style event.’
Not that Dr Simonsen has completely turned his back on the 1, 2 and yes sometimes up to 3-day/up-to-24-hour marathons for cheap n’ cheerful Lemons-type events he was instrumental in introducing to this country from 2016.
Later in September , for instance, Dr Simonsen will be back at Hampton Downs, overseeing the action at his annual two-day, day/night, up to 24-hour motor racing event for Lemons cars, an event which plays out on the full international circuit, and has in previous years set new records for the number of participants.
Then, just another month later Dr Simonsen heads south, to Cromwell in Central Otago to prepare for the first ever NaZCAR motor race meeting at Highlands’ Motorsport Park (on Saturday November 2nd). As befits such an auspicious occasion Dr Simonsen has even rolled out a new, special 9-to-5 race event format to début at the meeting.
“This event is perfect for teams of 4 (or more) drivers that want to have fun, get a boot-load of seat-time and race around NZ’s premiere circuit, complete with bridge, woop woops and a few ‘surprises’ along the way! It’s the fruitiest motorsport you’ll ever experience…” quips Dr. Simonsen.
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