It is wholly appropriate – in this case anyway – that it was one of New Zealand’s greatest home-grown comedic characters, Fred Dagg, who told it to us straight – ‘we don’t know how lucky we are!’
Comedians it seems can do that in this country; and yes, I am aware of the irony in pointing out the fact.
Because my own colleagues in the mainstream media seem hell-bent on digging up and gleefully highlighting the bad – be it climate change, Ihumatao, immigration, or the latest crooked ‘financial advisor’s’ pathetic Ponzi scheme, you’d think that New Zealand was already a long way down the road to ‘hell in a handcart.’
I, however, beg to differ. Speaking strictly personally here, I think my own little slice of the world is – frankly – doing alright mate! And I think that rather than perennially seeking out and gleefully highlighting the negative, as my aforesaid colleagues in the mainstream media appear to be doing at the moment, I’m going to make a point in my column this week of ‘doing a Fred Dagg,’ and highlighting some of the good things that are actually going on in motorsport circles in this fantastic little country of ours.
1/ Starting with the obvious……It’s less than a month now until ‘our’ local round of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship at Pukekohe Park Raceway with – get this! – Kiwi drivers running first, second and third in the series points standings.
That frankly, is an incredible state-of-affairs, but really only highlights what most of us have known (but the mainstream media can’t seem to get their ‘stick-and-ball-sport-addled’ brains around), we have been producing world-class racing drivers since Adam was a Cowboy, the only difference now is that there are pathways which – if you have the right mix of talent, determination and dollars you can contemplate making a career out of your ability and passion, as the likes of Scott McLaughlin, Shane Van Gisbergen and Fabian Coulthard are proving across the Tasman and Nick Cassidy, Earl Bamber and – of course – Scott Dixon and Brendon Hartley are doing a little further afield.
2/ If you think – as I do – that we are in for another classic ding-dong battle at Pukekohe Park next month, imagine what our summer is going to hold. For a start I think the all-new turbo-engined FT-60 Toyota is going to make the Castrol Toyota Racing Series an even better spectacle in terms both of the numbers of top-level drivers from Europe, the US and Asia coming down to sharpen up for the 2020 season and – hopefully – a re-match between our own top-two, Marcus Armstrong and Liam Lawson.
Both are world-class peddlers in their own rights and – as we saw at Highlands, Hampton Downs and Manfeild, each has their own strengths and – yes – weaknesses. In equal cars, on circuits both now know, and in front of fans not scared to take sides I think their rivalry alone will be worth the price of admission.
3/ Yet, the Castrol TRS series is just one of several drawcards, Geoff Short of promotions company SpeedWorks has been able to put together for the coming summer ‘season.’ The New Zealand arm of Toyota Gazoo Racing is building another batch of Toyota 86 coupes to satisfy demand for what will now inevitably become a feeder series – or ‘finishing school’ – for our own TCR tin-top championship.
While I don’t expect really big things from the inaugural TCR series this summer, I think that by the time the 2020 winter ‘enduro’ rounds are over we will have a hard-core group of 20-30 car owners 100% committed to a 2021 championship with a strong trans-Tasman component plus several ring-ins from Asia and Europe/the UK.
4/ Promoter Geoff Short’s other absolute masterstroke (in my humble opinion anyway) is the deal he has struck with D1NZ’s Brendon White to incorporate rounds of the national drifting championship with rounds of the national summer motor racing one. How to draw a decent crowd on the first day of racing at a meeting has always been a bit of a hit ‘n miss affair.
The Teretonga round, in particular, is going to absolutely go off (rain or shine!!!) on the Friday and Saturday afternoons and – looooog – southern evenings of the last weekend of January because the track’s usual drift section (from Castrol to the Hairpin) has never really suited the low power/low grip vibe of a typical Drift South field. High power/high grip cars like Darren Kelly’s monster RB-engined GT-R35 Nissan, Cole Armstrong’s RB30DET R34 Skyline and Fanga Dan Woolhouse’s genuine RTR Ford Mustang on the other hand will be perfect for it. They’ll be gearing up and gripping up for what I predict will be another (in a long line, actually) of breakthrough D1NZ events.
5/ It’s not just mainstream circuit racing which would appear to be in rude good health either. In fact, I sort of/kind of borrowed the theme of ‘we don’t know how lucky we are’ from one of my columnists on NZ4WD magazine, Bryan ‘Yoda’ Chang.
Few people outside the spectacular but I fear a little ‘inward-looking’ or perhaps better described as ‘self-contained’ sport realise this but, in a word, the joint is ‘jump’n!’ For years it might well have been the domain of ‘blokes building odd little VW Buggies on a strict budget in their sheds’ but in recent years it has undergone a miraculous kind of makeover.
First came a class (actually there are a couple now) for factory-built UTVs (or Side by Sides), cool, fun but most importantly, race-ready machines you could buy – like a MX bike – off the showroom floor. This brought a whole new bunch of fun-loving, free-spending individuals to the sport. Most have stayed too, not to mention brought mates, as well as sons and daughters along.
What has got Bryan Chang (though why I call him that I don’t know because in the 20-something years I have known him everyone else has referred to him by his nick-name, Yoda) really excited of late however, is the sheer number of serious Class 1 buggies and trucks that have come in from the US.
As he said in his ‘Dirt Nation’ column in the September issue of NZ4WD magazine (and I quote); “If the current state of class one for unlimited race cars is any indication of the health of New Zealand’s economy, then we’re going gangbusters at the moment.’ By the ‘current state’ he means the pretty much unprecedented influx of $100K+ truck or car ‘race rigs’ now here and running at a National championship level. Add in the similar growth in UTV numbers at the sub $50K end of the market and you have a perfect ‘window’ into the real health (or otherwise) of the economy.
You do because – simply put – the money to buy and run these big off-roaders has to come from somewhere. And it certainly isn’t from sponsorship. Or in this particular case from the ‘Bank of Mum or Dad.’
No. Most, I suspect, is coming from the tax-paid profits of the tradies and small business owners who are buying them to drive themselves.
These are also the sort of ‘work-hard/play hard’ blokes who have over the past five or six years, turned the new ‘car’ market on its head.
Up until recently, the new ‘car’ market was all about companies buying Falcons and Commodores for their middle managers, and retirees rewarding themselves with a new Corolla once they got their ‘Gold Card.’
Today the market is all about big, brawny, turbo-diesel powered double cab Utes (Ford Ranger and the like) being bought for work/play/family use by the foot soldiers of the brave new world of the NZ economy, tradies and the otherwise self-employed.
The so-called ‘Business’ section of the NZ Herald had another go at ‘talking the economy into recession’ this morning, a common theme now that the staff (of one full-timer and part-time sub-editor no doubt) have tried and failed to get any traction on their previous ‘Auckland House Price Collapse’ hobby horse.
I don’t really know enough about the economy to argue either way. Someone who does though is the aforementioned Fred Dagg who added this extra bit/piece/stanza/section to the song that inspired this week’s column back in 1978.
And (again) I quote
“So if things are looking really bad
you’re thinking of givin’ it away
Remember New Zealand’s a cracker
and I reckon come what may
If things get appallingly bad
and we all get atrociously poor
If we stand in the queue with our hats on
we can borrow a few million more.”
Because…… “We don’t know how lucky we are, mate
We don’t know how lucky we are.
We don’t know how lucky we are, mate
We don’t know how lucky we are!”
Main picture: Dave Templeman two-wheeling his UTV at this Woodhill 100 this year
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