It’s a story I never tire of telling, and – sorry, you’ll just have to believe me – I recycle it here not to have a gratuitous poke at MotorSport NZ, but in the (forlorn perhaps) hope that those involved have learned their lesson and that they will not repeat the same mistake again.
The problem, you see, was that someone, somewhere, in the organisation had noticed a ‘worrying change’ in the demographics of your typical motorsport club, and with it the make-up of the grids at meetings up and down the country.
That grid numbers themselves, were hardly affected; on the contrary, at the time I seem to remember the sport was going through a mini-boom. But that didn’t seem to matter to the worry-warts.
The problem, as they saw it, was that ‘young people’ were no longer throwing themselves lemming-like at clubs and club level motorsport events, and – so the logic went – if the drop-off continued at the then current rate there would be no one left for the good burghers of MotorSport NZ-affiliated clubs to run events for in five, ten, 15 (pick a number) years’ time.
Never mind that;
1/ Karting had quietly and effectively slipped in to fill the breach at entry level for adults as well as kids
2/ Other motorised sports like drag racing, powerboat racing and off-roading were offering petrolheads legitimate alternatives to building up a club car and doing your first hill climb, club rally or bent sprint.
3/ Wholesale changes to the ‘Kiwi lifestyle’ meant that people in general had more choice as to what they did with their leisure time.
Kiwis love nothing more than a challenge, of course, and before you could say ‘let’s form a committee’ a committee of executives keen, apparently, to ‘get to the bottom of the problem’ and ‘solve it once and for all’ was formed, investigations into ‘the problem’ were made, and once tabled, recommendations were presented.
In my humble opinion the real problem, here, was, that there wasn’t actually a problem. Sure, the demographics of those actually turning up and racing was different. There was a lot more grey hair around for a start.
But – again – from where I was standing – grids were as full as they’d ever been, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the racing.
Despite that MotorSport NZ continued to humour the 55+ year-olds on the ‘youth’ committee, before readily accepting their ‘recommendation’ that since ‘the kids’ were into their WRXs and Evos at that time, then a production racing class catering for just such cars would be the answer to all our/their woes.
The class, as many of you who were also around at the time, might remember, had potential but has hampered by the fact that the cars proved so expensive to run.
Sure, drive down any ‘High Street’ of a Friday night and you see plenty of Evos and WRXS two, three, four, and sometimes more up, cruising around.
And for a while here it was the done thing for so-called ‘trust fund babies’ from here, China and – in one celebrated case from Fiji apparently – to throw heaps of dollars at local engine builders in a race to be quickest down the quarter mile in a highly-modified Mitsi or Subie.
But drag racing – particularly at the more relaxed Night Speed Drag Wars ‘run-what-ya-brung’ ET-based meetings I’m personally familiar with, was about as close as most of the ‘young people’ who owned these cars ever got to actually competing in them.
Again, there was a good – and in retrospect fairly obvious – reason for this as well. In the majority of cases the WRXs and EVOs ‘the kids’ (or rather their parents/bank/finance companies) owned were their everyday ‘daily driver.’
While happy to run in a straight line against a mate for bragging rights, converting that car into a pure race (or even, for that matter, a still road-legal ‘Targa’) car and going up against ‘proper’ drivers like two-time 4WD class winner Simon Sceats and the multi-talented Brady Kennet was a bridge (way) too far.
Which left us where?
Life, by its very nature, is cyclical with its inevitable ups and downs, peaks and troughs and people constantly coming, going, and generally trying to put their oar in.
Sure, the number of ‘young people’ either competing themselves or bowling along to watch a race meeting might have been down significantly on some ‘golden era’ in the past.
But is that any reason to panic and come up with some hair-brained ‘new class’ idea based on the second-guessing of a bunch of old blokes?
I don’t think so!
I also know that through the period in question (the mid-2000s) there was no shortage of young fellows and fellowesses taking their first tentative steps onto the motorsport stage here.
The only difference – between then and, say, ten or so years before – was they were doing it in karts, and they were doing it at privately-organised grassroots drift days.
And I know this because I was there!
I was in my early 30s when I finally decided to see what life was like on the other side of the motorsport fence, and I – and many more like me – was welcomed into the fold at the Mt Wellington kart club and encouraged in the very same way by the very same people who could make even the most callow and nervy seven-year-old feel like they had just taken on and beaten Scotty McLaughlin at their first ever club day.
Fast forward 15-or-so years and though – with the introduction of the internet, email and text messaging in the interim – the actual process was quite different, I ‘got into’ drifting pretty much the same way
“Who are these people?” I remember my wife Delia asking me as I was transferring $150 into a total stranger’s bank account after receiving a group txt from ‘Drift Motorsport NZ’ advising that they had booked the Taupo track on a Tuesday in June and that I’d better hurry and ‘book a spot’ by transferring the money because ‘spaces were limited.’
“I’ve no idea,” I said, though I had checked out the then rudimentary website belonging to a couple called Drew and Jodi, who I figured must be legit when I arrived at the Taupo track on the appointed morning to find at least 80 other drifters, some who had travelled from as far away as Kerikeri in the north and Wellington in the south just to let loose in their Skylines, Laurels and various S chassis SIlvias.
I must have been – on average – at least 25 years older than most of the other Newbies at that meeting, yet – again – I was welcomed into the burgeoning scene like someone’s long-lost (older) brother.
Since then I’ve had the pleasure of watching (and in some cases helping with publicity) some of the karters I met at Mt Wellington and drifters I met that day (and at subsequent ones) at Taupo as their careers have progressed.
And I often reflect on the pleasure my own odd little path through the various codes has provided me.
I still have a good old chuckle at Motorsport NZ’s ‘Chicken Little/The Sky is Falling moment’, too, and wonder, what might have happened had those who decided they knew best about what ‘the kids wanted’ actually gone out and asked some actual ‘kids….’
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