The Nissan Mobil 500 (aka the ‘Wellington Street Race) is probably our best known and best remembered race meeting on a temporary circuit.
But what about those fantastic temporary circuits created at airports like Ardmore, Wigram and Whenuapai? They played an absolutely pivotal role in the evolution of our sport here, and I’ve been idly wondering, this past week, what it would take to get at least one back on the calendar, even if only on a semi-regular basis.
While there have been literally hundreds of other temporary street race events set up and run since our first organised motorsport one (at Christchurch’s Addington Raceway in 1905) what’s missing – in my humble opinion anyway – is a regular high-profile Tier 1 of 2 level motorsport event run on something other than a purpose-built closed circuit; preferably a converted aerodrome-type circuit like Ardmore, or Wigram.
One of the reasons is the fact that we are actually rather good at building permanent circuits. In fact, for a country with a population which still hasn’t quite reached the 5 million mark (4.794 million at last official count) we punch well above our weight with eight.
You only have to look at the Nürburgring Nordschleife in Germany, Mt Panorama circuit across the Tasman or the Sebring airfield circuit in the US to see how, managed correctly, a street or airfield-based circuit can actually complement a man-made one.
In theory the annual Boxing Day street race meeting round Wanganui’s Cemetery Circuit provides just such a contrast for the country’s motorcycle road racers.
Though it’s only really been since Sky TV has started televising Ireland’s iconic – true ‘road-based’ meetings – like the Cookstown 100, North West 200 and Ulster Grand Prix – that I’ve realised how different our idea of a converted street circuit for the racing of motorcycles is to that of our densely-accented ‘brethren’ on the other side of the world.
Here, our temporary motorcycle ‘road’ circuits have tended to be held on short, sharp, town, city or industrial area roads, usually chip-sealed and often with simple 90-degree corners.
Whanganui’s Cemetery Circuit, the just recently retired ‘Battle of the Streets’ circuit in Paeroa, and Gracefield in the (Lower) Hutt valley, do/did contain exceptions to this general rule. But only in as much as they have/had a couple of corners where you could ‘bang-it-down-a-gear-and-pitch-it-in’ rather than scrub off all your hard-earned speed at each and every 90 degree turn and have to start from scratch again as you accelerated out again.
In stark contrast, in the self-proclaimed ‘home of real road racing,’ Ireland, a hardy bunch of locals plus the odd foreign interloper (like our own Bruce Anstey) regular hit the rev limiter in top gear (which means real speeds of up to 320km/h) on their 600cc Supersport and 1000cc Superbikes, on stretches of lumpy, bumpy tarmac which – for the other 51 weeks a year – are typical urban and rural fringe thoroughfares used by locals to go about their business in their cars, buses, trucks etc.
The jewel in the crown for these riders are, of course, the annual motorcycle road races (The TT in June and Manx GP in August) on the Isle of Man, events which continue to attract record entries from riders and team, as well as interest from fans – and because of it – mainstream (i.e. non motorcycle industry) sponsors like Monster Energy.
Bar the long-gone Ryall Bush ‘road course’ north-west of Invercargill and the near-mythical Hawkesbury motorcycle circuit near Blenheim, New Zealand – to my knowledge anyway and I am happy to be proved wrong if it makes a better story – has never really had a truly scary-fast, balls-to-the wall car or motorcycle street race circuit to call its own.
What we have had, however, are a couple of stunning airfield circuits in the original NZGP one at Ohakea, the one which very much put the sport here on the international map in the 1950s, Ardmore in south-east Auckland, the late – and very much still lamented – Wigram Air Force Base one adjacent Christchurch’s main south road, and – more recently – the rough, bumpy TACCOC circuit marked out on the hexagonal concrete slabs that make up the main runway and apron of the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Base Auckland at Whenuapai, in Auckland’s semi-rural north-west.
Sadly, I never quite got to drive at either, even when – in the case of Wigram – I had what I considered a suitable car.
That car was the Fuelstar Series 1 Mazda RX7 I drove for the P.A.D Racing team in the Pyrotect South Island RX7 (nee Pro 7) series. And though, the year before I joined the fun the RX7s had been welcomed by the organisers of the annual Lady Wigram Trophy meeting, the final meeting at the circuit – before the ‘base’ was closed down and much of the ‘hallowed tarmac’ ripped up for a housing development – was organised by a bunch of Euro-centric classic car types, who point-blank refused to accept my entry on the grounds that the meeting was, apparently, for ‘classic cars’ and though they considered a Datsun 240Z a ‘classic’ in their (obviously jaundiced and cataract-clouded eyes) a raucous rotary-engined Series 1 RX7 was not!
Speaking of ‘classic,’ Google ‘Wigram’ and ‘Bomb Bay’ corner and up should come an epic pic of Jim Richards leaning into the bonkers Bomb Bay corner, a fast sweeping left-hander which led on to the long main straight.
Bar Pukekohe’s fast, bumpy right-hand ‘Sweeper,’ and the last 150 metres of the front straight at Teretonga before it morphs into the long, relentless left-handed Loop corner, I can’t think of any other corner requiring as much sphincter-puckering and general ‘left-brain/right brain head games as Bomb Bay.
And that is just one of the nine corners which made up what has got to go down in history as one of the motor racing world’s great temporary airfield circuits.
Which is where I am going with this particular column.
They say that variety is the spice of life, therefore imagine how tasty a dish our annual summer motor racing season would be with a mix of wide, smooth ultra-modern purpose-built circuits like Highlands or Hampton Downs, a couple (in rotation, year-on/year-off) of narrow, traditional ‘heritage’ tracks like Teretonga, Levels and/or Circuit Chris Amon Manfeild…PLUS a bonkers, flat-to-the-boards-fast, open ultra-high-speed once a year/or even once-every-second year temporary airfield circuit.
And no, in case any of you are already spluttering into your Milo and composing a sternly worded ‘Comment’ I haven’t purposefully left out Pukekohe Park or what I could class as the modern multi-purpose ‘motordrome’ circuits, Mike Pero/Ruapuna and Taupo’s Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park.
It’s just if I had included them in the paragraph above you would have run out of breath trying to read it!
And where might we find some suitable candidate airfield/port/large chunk of otherwise underused tarmac for such a stunning addition to our current permanent circuit inventory?
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t got the foggiest…. though a quick aerial search via Google Maps immediately turned up a couple of interesting possibilities, one in the South Island, the other in the Far North.
The southern one, the old Oamaru airport, has the advantage that – or at least as I understand it – it is no longer serviced by any of our National carriers so therefore could – foreseeably – be leased out for a weekend (or two) with the forbearance of the local aero club.
The one in the Far North – at Kerikeri – is still an Air NZ destination, but has the advantage of a Bay of Islands backdrop which would be a potent backdrop for any TV a meeting there would no doubt attract.
This, however, is where the true value of social media comes in. Someone, somewhere, reading this column will know of just the right piece of tarmac, it’s just they won’t have put two and two together.
If that’s you and you’ve just had a light-bulb moment why not share it, either in the Comments section below or via Facebook once it is up on the Talk Motorsport page or one that it has been shared on.
Ohakea, Ardmore, Wigram, Paraparaumu, Whenuapai……you never know, it could be a venue you come up with which revives this wonderful local tradition!
Main photo: Jim Richards in the Sidchrome Mustang and Paul Fahey in the Cologne Capri exit the hairpin at Wigram in 1975 during the Tin Top race of the decade
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