Greg Murphy hit the nail on the head when – on some sort of sports game show I caught, quite by accident one night on Sky TV – he said that it is doubly hard for kids to get a start in our sport because it requires, a special and usually (in relative terms anyway) expensive piece of equipment, aka a ‘car.’
If your 7-year-old, for instance, has a burning desire to be an All Black all he or she needs is a uniform, pair of boots and lift to and from ‘the game’ on Saturday. Activities that involve hitting a ball, puck and/or player from another team with a stick of some sort require a bit more of an investment.
Compared with the $3-5K for a starter kart package, $8-$10K for a you-beaut Junior MXer or $12-$15K for somewhere to start in the Formula First field, it’s small beer, however.
Yet, yet, yet per capita we have some of the best facilities – most still co-operatively funded through clubs but more and more the result of significant private investment – in the world.
Take karting, traditionally, and still very much regarded as, the first step on the ladder to F1.
A quick flick through KartSport NZ’s website (www.kartsport.co.nz) reveals 17 sealed tracks, from Whangarei in the north to Invercargill in the south, with the majority hosting at least one club-organised meeting a month.
There’s also a new-ish (non-affiliated) hard-pack dirt kart track at Te Aroha in the eastern Waikato, plus any number of temporary paddock-based tracks used by grass karters in the South Island.
For a country with the population (4.7m) less than the size of Sydney (4.8m) we are also amazingly well served by dedicated places to race a car. There are, for instance, eight sealed circuits from Pukekohe in the north to Teretonga (Invercargill) in the south, plus any number of special closed road club events like standing eighth and quarter miles, bent sprints and hill climbs each month, right up to the Mummy and Daddy of them all, the annual multi-day closed road Targa North Island and Targa NZ events organised by livewire promotor Peter Martin’s Ultimate Rally Group.
It’s a bit harder to go rallying (in theory you’re not meant to practise on that tight, twisty gravel backroad just out of town!) yet I don’t see entries at club or national level dropping away. Quite the contrary in fact, thanks in no small part no doubt to the phenomenon that is Hayden Paddon
Like karting and most car racing classes these days learning how to ‘go fast by turning left’ (aka speedway) is also a dedicated track-only activity. Again, the oval code appears in rude good health with the national body, Speedway NZ, overseeing 23 dirt tracks catering for both open (TQs, Midgets and Sprint Cars) and closed wheel (Saloons and Super Saloons) vehicles, plus a number of other non-SNZ-sanctioned so-called ‘black’ tracks.
There is now again more than one dedicated drag strip (Masterton Motorplex joining Meremere Dragway) plus heaps of temporary circuit or airfield-based quarter-mile venues. New Zealand also now has its own dedicated drift (Evergreen Park at Meremere) and off-road (Kaukapakapa in the north, West Melton the south) facilities.
As I have already pointed out most of these venues are still club owned and managed. That has not always been the case, however. In fact the appearance of facility-owning entrepreneurs like Tony Quinn (Highlands and now Hampton Downs) and Sky Zhou (Evergreen Drift Park) is not a recent phenomenon. Which is why (and sorry if I’ve taken a bit longer than normal to get to the point) this week’s column is a ‘shout-out’ of sorts to those like Tony who, having made a bit of money, have not been shy in spending it so that the rest of us can ‘have a bit of fun.’
This is by no means a definitive list either. I’m sure there are many more ‘coined-up’ individuals who have dug deep into their own pockets to fund or part-fund venues so by all means add names you think should be on my list in the Comments section below!
George Henning – Henning’s (or Mangere Motor) Speedway
By all accounts George made his money buying and selling cars in the years immediately after WW1 and though deeply involved in Auckland’s annual Beach Races at Muriwai decided, pretty much unilaterally, that the city needed a dedicated (oval) venue like those proliferating in the United States at the time.
Either by luck or circumstance he was able to buy a large block of land at Mangere which had a sunken and long dormant volcanic crater within its boundaries. It was this feature – the Pukaki crater which shaped the 2.1km ‘oval’ he built and for a while anyway, gave the city’s beach racers something different to do.
The first race meeting was held on March 23 1929 but choking dust soon became an issue despite liberal application of used motor oil!!, and by 1934 the sanctioning club, the NZ Motor Racing Drivers Association (NZMRDA later to become the Auckland Car Club) had moved their events down the road to a new, smaller, less dusty oval at Onehunga’s Gloucester Park.
When I was researching my book ‘Racing – A History of Motorsport in New Zealand’ I tried to find out what became of George, but drew a blank, which seems a sad way to end what started as such an inspirational story.
Tony Roberts & Chris Watson – Original founders of Hampton Downs
Look, I should know how Chris and Tony set up Hampton Downs; after-all I was in and out of their office (in the old McLaren service station building on Auckland’s Remuera Rd) often enough during the early days of the venture as I dug through the photo archives in the adjacent Bruce McLaren Trust Museum for my book. But the sheer scale, or rather the sheer audacity of what they did still leaves me coming out in a cold sweat.
Though both successful businessmen in their own right neither had the many millions of dollars required just to get through the resource consent process let alone see the project to fruition. But by creating the concept of a ‘country club-type’ environment then selling apartments off the plans (I remember well the original deposit was just $5K because that was about $4.5K more than I could spare at the time!) they somehow managed to rustle up enough cash to convince ‘the bank’ that building a multi-million dollar motorsport facility on a fog-bound swamp was a good idea.
I know they struggled mightily servicing the debt they had accrued once the venue was open. But both remained 100% committed to their shared dream, one of the reasons, I believe, it took so long for the eventual sale to Tony Quinn to go through. They must have been hurting, but never enough to resort to a fire sale. I see both men on a regular basis these days but like most of you, never think to thank them sincerely for creating such a fantastic, truly world-class venue. Next time (I see them) I definitely will.
Peter Martin – Ultimate Rally Group
Peter Martin is like that guy (the late Victor Kiam) who ‘liked the (Remington) shaver so much he bought the company.’ Before he bought ‘the Targa Rally’ off founder Mike John, Peter had been both a competitor and co-driver – the latter for good friend and fellow ‘car guy,’ Jason Gill.
So he knew ‘the business’ intimately and felt that it would be easy to ‘add value’ to it, something he is still doing 10 years on. Never one to accept no for an answer (witness his ability to successfully seek then negotiate road closures for iconic NZ roads like the Crown Range and Queenstown to Glenorchy ones in the South Island, and the Gentle Annie in the north) he somehow manages to combine a top-ten competitor’s drive and passion for what is known in the trade as a ‘blind’ (i.e. non-pace noted) event with a hard-nosed businessman’s eye for the bottom line.
What constantly continues to surprise me, however, is his ability to handle the stress of running a business with so many balls (his own amongst them!!) not only constantly in the air but also constantly in play. It’s all his own money on the line too. No-on else’s. If it was me and mine I would have been lying prone on the floor somewhere, mumbling incoherently in the fetal position a year or so into that 10. Not Peter, he thrives on all the uncertainty and conflict.
Sky Zhou – Evergreen Drift Park
When I first met Sky Zhou he was typical of most young drifters at the time….totally and utterly captivated by the sport and spending what looked like every dollar he earned on an RB25DET-powered Nissan S15.
At the time he was working as a mobile phone sales jockey in Manurewa and – though he was committed to the sport I figured that eventually, like most of his Kiwi counterparts at the time, he would eventually tire of spending so much of his own money and look for some other, preferably cheaper, way to get his kicks. As it turned out, however, he was only just starting.
Next he travelled to Japan and sought instruction from the Team Orange guys at the spiritual home of drift, Ebisu in the country’s mountainous north-west. At around the same time, in a visit back to his birth-place in China he discovered a pent-up – and at that point unsatisfied – demand there to do what he had, in stark contrast, found so easy to do ‘at home’ in New Zealand, learn to drift. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Using his own money as seed capital he set up Drift Academy schools here, in Japan and in China. Because it is his own money he does things properly as well. Which is where his latest Kiwi venture, Evergreen Drift Park at Meremere south of Auckland, comes in. Aware that – largely because of the temporary circuit-based drift sections used by the series – the D1NZ National Drift Championship series had morphed into what contacts in Japan derisively called ‘the NZ Burnout Champs’ Sky sought to slow things down and as his masters at Team Orange had taught him, focus on the basics if you want to improve.
Plenty of people obviously agree because just a year after it opened the facility is booked out most weekends and getting used more and more during the week – the latter thanks to a growing demand for extreme sports activities from thrill-seeking in-bound Chinese tourists.
Tony Quinn – Highlands and Hampton Downs Motorsport Parks
Finally what article about motorsport-mad entrepreneurs spending up large in infrastructure we can all use would be complete without mention of Mr Quinn. Small-minded social media trolls might jump up and down and say that all Tony has done is step in with a big bag of bucks and accept the kudos for what in effect was someone else’s groundwork.
But hell, why bother even breathing if you are that bitter, that twisted and (face it!) that green with envy. New Zealand’s gain – when Quinn and son Clarke first took over the Highlands site from the small group of Central Otago, Dunedin and Invercargill investors who set the ball in motion – was actually Australia’s loss as well.
Tony told me last time I interviewed him, that he has been trying to persuade the owner of Ipswich’s Queensland International Raceway to sell that facility to him for years. Speaking strictly personally here it is what he has done at Hampton Downs which – because I live in Auckland – has had the biggest impact on me.
In the past year I have worked covering major national series events on both the National and International circuits, thrown my old Nissan Skyline drifter around on Mad Mike Drift Force days on the GT Radials Club Circuit, and got within 8/10ths of a second of Shane Van Gisbergen’s best lap at the Go-Kart track.
Now that there is a great café on site I am also breaking my trips south at the track. Tony didn’t need to buy Hampton Downs, but he did. So next time I see him…..I’ll shake his hand and say a heartfelt ‘ thanks mate.’ I suggest you do the same because if he didn’t share our passion for cars and places to race them I’m sure there are people from all the many and varied stick ‘n ball codes who would gladly take his money!
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