Ways to go forward - Licensing

This week, Talkmotorsport continues to look into the Australian Auto Sport Alliance licensing option that has entered the NZ market…..

I guess assumptions can be dangerous things. Or empowering.

Like most people, I had always assumed that MotorSport New Zealand was ‘the’ sanctioning body for the sport in this country.

That’s a natural assumption given that its authority is vested by the FIA itself.

But nagging in the back of my mind was the existence of ‘outlier’ codes here – the bigger of which looks more to the US than the FIA.

Along came drifting. “But that’s not real motorsport,” said many of us, shaking our heads. “It’s more like synchronised swimming with more rubber.”

But the first motor race event in New Zealand was actually organised by the Automobile Association and had races for motorcycles and cars.

Drag racing, born in the 1960s, has two organising bodies, the NZ Hot Rod Association and NZ Drag Racing Association. They apparently co-exist fairly smoothly.

Offroad racing has its own governing body, and chooses to run itself unlike in Aussie where it’s run under CAMS rules and there are regular complains about the costs of affiliation.

Then there are the ‘outlaw’ speedway codes, who run their own game too.

Motorsport – motor racing at least – has two faces in New Zealand. It has never been healthier at the grass-roots, but in the mid-range and upper tiers, things begin to look less ‘together’ and the top classes give little sense that they operate as part of a coherent and logical structure.

It’s always been taken as read that MSNZ was ‘the’ sanctioning body and that codes of motorsport that dared to look elsewhere – at a permitting authority with better/cheaper public liability insurance for example – would be turned into pillars of salt.

Enter the Australian Auto Sport Alliance (AASA). Driven by Aussie motorsport legend Bob Jane, the AASA was formed 15 years ago to give Australian events a choice in sanctioning bodies. It has dipped a toe into the NZ scene, picking up a handful of events here and there, and expanded into New Zealand recently with the announcement it would pick up the permitting role for the Targa portfolio of events.

How did the Targa involvement happen? There was an issue with the Targa Tour [a non-competitive adjunct to big Targa events] because MSNZ wasn’t happy with its inclusion in the main Targa. But the Tour needs as much management and oversight as the main event because it runs before the big cars hit the stages. If anything goes wrong with the Tour, it has a direct effect on Targa itself.

But what the Alliance arguably required was ‘boots on the ground’ and a local perspective feeding back into the group. That representative, it turns out, is none other than television producer/director, race and Targa competitor, former MotorSport New Zealand official Gordon Legge.

Legge has been driven for some time by a view that offering an alternative to the status quo was critical to making the sport grow. “It’s not just a matter of being the permitting body and holding the insurance, AASA is much more hands-on

In Australia, AASA co-exists with CAMS (Motorsport Australia); in New Zealand Legge sees the same happening. Both organisations have the same goal: providing permitting services to the organisers of local events and series.

“The difference with AASA is we stay much closer to the event, more involved with how the event is run and any incidents are managed.”

Still a hands-on television producer and director, businessman and race car owner and competitor, Legge has also held influential positions within MotorSport New Zealand. For more than a decade, he has been deeply involved in developing a vision for the future.

Through that time, in addition to his video production ‘day job’, there has been a constant stream of racing, rallying and Targa competition in BMWs of all types. It is no coincidence that Legge points to the success of the Castrol BMW E30 series as a classic example of a club-based ‘second tier’ race series that has grown its own success story. Add to that the 2k Cup, the half-serious, half-fun LeMons race series, the hugely popular VW-based Formula First and the many club categories and the foundation of the sport is well established.

The situation further up the ‘tree’ is not as encouraging. With a glaring North-South disparity between F1600 (Formula Ford) class numbers, the misfiring announcement and non-appearance of TCR and the still-healthy but increasingly ‘clubbie’ NZV8 grids, the upper tier has less positive prospects.

Legge says the classes at the top stand or fall on their own merits. The Toyota Racing Series is a stand-out success due in large part to the foresight of previous category manager Barrie Thomlinson, who responded to feedback from the series’ high value international competitors and re-shaped the championship to suit them. The series had its years in purgatory, when the majority of the drivers were locals and the grids floated under the arbitrary benchmark applied so as to exclude Tier 2 and clubbie categories for Gold Star status and Tier One inclusion.

By contrast, the BNT NZV8s’ decision not to race at the southern rounds of this year’s summer series indicates the very different composition of the fields in the tin-top category. The V8 Utes are likewise vocal about their dislike of travelling south and a compressed five week ‘heart’ of summer motor racing. No argument that the racing is close, but the drivers are generally also the owners and struggle with managing five consecutive weeks away from their businesses.

Rallying in New Zealand has different challenges – the sheer cost of using the roads, the cost of restitution after an event mean it is the club end of the sport that has shrunk dramatically. The national championship goes from success to success but has priced many competitors out of active competition at the lower levels. With the sport increasingly nudged out of high value forestry blocks by insurance costs and forest managers understandably unwilling to put their assets at risk, events are run more and more on public-owned roads. Road repair and restitution bills in the region of $60,000 or more are becoming the norm.

So rallying could win back a pretty big competitor base if route and restitution issues could be sorted – either by using the return of the WRC to court some big sponsors or by working on a relationship with the councils and companies that maintain the roads.

Let’s also keep an eye out for innovative new codes and categories and events. Legge says part of the growth potential for New Zealand motorsport rests with the willingness of the sanctioning bodies to be open-minded about new opportunities.

For example, a privately promoted multi-round premier hillclimb series run at the level of the old Race to the Sky and Hayden Paddon’s Nevis-based event could attract top competitors, ‘blue chip’ sponsors and major international interest.

Paying more attention to emerging forms of motorsport would also help showcase New Zealand motor racing. Drifting and the like may have been around for some time, but its inclusion in the main summer series has been belated and grudging.

“I do think we should be looking for ways to put the sport right in front of the people, not hide it away,” he says. “We need better TV coverage, live streaming, better strategies for putting the sport in front of wider audiences, and a coherent upper-level class structure in the case of motor racing.”

Having half the top classes only appear in the North Island is no way to send a message about the sport’s sustainability and growth.

Legge says he wants to see the sport grow to the benefit of all, and that AASA has much to offer in that respect, having supported some very high profile events in Australia.