With no firm date for Auckland’s current Level 3 ‘locked-down-at-home’ Covid-19 restrictions to be lifted, motor racing event organiser Dr Jacob Simonsen has again prudently postponed his most popular event, the annual Continuous 24 Hours of NaZCAR Endurance Event at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park, from dates in late October this year until Saturday and Sunday February 19th & 20th next year (2022).
Only yesterday Dr Simonsen announced the outright cancellation of what was to have been the third and final round of his new-for-2021 3 & 6 Hr Pro Series at Pukekohe’s Pukekohe Park Raceway this Saturday (Oct 09).
However, with 110 teams (most with as many as five drivers per team) already entered, and Hampton Downs management having already agreed to the event using the full 3.8km ‘international’ circuit for the first time, Dr Simonsen says cancelling the novelty-based 24 hour NaZCAR (nee LeMons) event was never an option.
What was, was finding acceptable alternative dates to run the event without Covid restrictions.
Like virtually everyone else living here at the time (early August) Dr Simonsen felt that the current Lockdown would deal to the Delta strain of the Coronavirus in much the same way as New Zealand’s original Lockdown did to the original strain early in 2020 – and that everyone’s life would be back to a Level 1 ‘normal’ by the end of September.
That meant a first postponement of the event from September 24 & 25 until Hampton Downs’ management’s original ‘alternative dates’ offer of Thursday and Friday October 21 & 22.
Unfortunately this time the Lockdown has been far less effective than before and with no firm date for – in particular – Auckland’s southern ‘border’ to re-open, Dr Simonsen was forced to re-visit and reconsider these initial ‘postponement’ dates.
“It’s not as if we’re struggling to get the numbers, or anything from our end,” he said last night. “It’s just the uncertainty out there at the moment because the Government cannot or will not put a firm date on when Auckland will drop down to Level 2 and we can contemplate putting on our 24 hour race.
“If I was a betting man I might be inclined to ‘tough it out’ on the expectation that the Levels might be relaxed before the 21st and 22nd of this month. But because there are now so many people who have signed up to do it, that’s a gamble I’m simply not prepared to take.”
To that end Dr Simonsen asked Hampton Downs management for a ‘second postponement date’ close enough so that the momentum from this year’s event would not be completely lost, yet far enough out that the Government has reached its vaccination goals and Lockdowns are – hopefully – a thing of the past.
That date – or rather, dates – is Saturday February 19 and Sunday February 20, right in the heart of New Zealand’s summer racing season.
A fair way off, true, but ever the optimist, Dr Simonsen is also contemplating another NaZCAR endurance race event to ‘fill the gap’ should a drop in Lockdown levels allow it.
“Right now we’re thinking December but that, really, is all I can say until we have more clarity from Government as to when the current Lockdown ends,” he said.
For more information on either the 24 Hours of NaZCAR event the new NaZCAR Pro Series go to nazcar.nz or check out the NaZCAR page on Facebook.
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