I well remember the sage advice long-time local motor vehicle industry mover and shaker Wally Dumper – back when he was marketing supremo at motorcycle importer Moller Yamaha – gave me when with another couple of well-meaning young blokes ‘way’ back in the day (as they say) I got tied up with a campaign to ‘promote motorcycles and motorcycling’ in NZ.
As I remember it, Wal was one of the first ‘industry guys’ to offer his support to our fledgling venture – with a caveat….
“Don’t judge the health or otherwise of the ‘scene’ around the rest of the country with what you see in Auckland……”
Which meant that Wal, and the other two blokes who were part of the ‘ginger group,’ Phil and Ian, and I were on the same page.
You see Phil, Ian and I had only recently – independently – moved to the so-called ‘Queen City’ from Wellington, and apart from struggling with the humidity and general ‘big city-ness’ of the place, often found ourselves wondering ‘where are all the motorbike riders….’
No matter what the weather threw at Wellington, for instance, the city had a number of big, welcoming motorcycle shops, not to mention dedicated motorcycle-only parking spaces always chock-full of everything from the latest GSX1100s to those spindly little FA50 Honda ‘mopeds’ people used to ride, dotted around the CBD.
In Auckland – at the time – the only signs of two-wheel life were outside the Uni on Symonds St during the week, and a street on the North Shore (Barry’s Pt Rd) with a few dealerships….
Like a lot of things, of course, over time I learning that – per capita – Auckland had just as many people ‘keen on bikes’ as any other city, town or country area in NZ- it’s just oddly enough, more appeared to be into dirt bikes and casual riding in the sand at the Woodhill motorcycle park or mud of the Riverhead Forest than road bikes and road riding/racing that ruled the ‘scene’ in Wellington.
Not only that but rather than being into road racing at pretty much the expense of every other style and/or discipline of riding like we had been in Wellington, Auckland had what appeared to be mutually exclusive pockets of wildly divergent interests from Vintage & Veteran machines to Harleys and even Scooters. Not to mention dirt bikes and dirt riding,
So, Wal was right…. Judge marketing (which for the purposes of this column I will define as the ‘sizzle’ rather than the ‘sausage’) to the rest of NZ from a flash office in the Wynyard Quarter, or a funky refit off Ponsonby Rd at your peril!!!!
Which neatly brings me to the subject of this week’s column – the opening round of this year’s South Island Endurance Series at Invercargill’s Teretonga Park.
Honestly, I don’t know why I have wasted breath on the subject of ‘what’s wrong with (or rather, how do we fix) the motor racing scene in this country,’ when one of our best (and definitely most challenging) circuits can host two enthralling endurance races (the One Hour on Saturday and Three-Hour on Sunday) involving world-class drivers in exotic state-of-the-art cars in the one weekend.
Seriously, how good does it have to get, with the result of the Three-Hour literally going down to the wire. and the One Hour being won not by one of a number of pukka factory GT3 Porsche (Carrera) Cup cars, or even a gen-u-ine late-model mid-engined McLaren in the field….but by a wild, hot-rodded Ford Mustang built by a bunch of good old boys from Cambridge in the Waikato!
Honestly, for a bloke (that would be me!) whose first memories of Teretonga (gained as a 9 or 10-year-old) were of Ron Silvester’s Chev coupe exploding out of The Loop and chasing down a pack of similarly odd-ball ‘Allcomers’ towards Castrol before disappearing ‘over the back’ in a haze of tyre and oil smoke, the thought of an absolute pukka, contemporary Aston Martin Vantage GT3 car being driven by a ‘works-supported’ Spaniard – Alex Riberas – and a guy who I have had a bit to do with in his Drifting career – Darren Kelly – winning the ‘main race’ by a margin of just over a half a second from the Audi RS8 LMS of last year’s winning pair – Neil Foster and Jonny Reid – is well, let’s not beat around the bush here – like a road map both of my life and my own modest racing journey through it.
As I’m sure it is for others with a hell of a lot more ‘skin’ in the game; from the likes of Lyall Williamson of International Motorsport to local car builder/restorer Barry Leitch whose son Brendon and top female driver Christina Orr-West finished third in the other Audi R8 LWS in the field, local businessman Scott O’Donnell who finished fifth in a Porsche GT3 Cup Car he shared with Allan Dippie from Wanaka, Dippie’s brother, Martin, from Dunedin, who drove his Porsche 991 to second place (behind Ford Mustang pair Sam Collins and Nick Ross) in the One Hour race on Saturday, not to forget Alexandra man Bruce Davidson (4th in the One hour in his Chev Corvette C6R), whose motorcycle mates of long-standing (and here I’m talking about 45+ years) will remember just as fondly for his efforts on the South Island Enduro circuit on a wild self-built XL350-enginered ‘Fire Engine red’ CR250 Honda!!!
So. With incontrovertible evidence like this you have got to ask yourself the question, don’t you? With a line-up like the one that turned up at Teretonga over the weekend – in spite it must be said, of our largest concentration of population, Auckland, still being under a 2.5 Level COVID-19 restriction, and the rest of the country under Level 2 – how can anyone say there is a problem with motor racing in this country?
Sure, more spectators might have turned up to a New Zealand Grand Prix meeting at Ardmore in – I don’t know! – 1958. But New Zealand, need I remind you, was a vastly different place, with far fewer ‘entertainment options’ and a lot less money circulating for so—called ‘frivolities’ like racing.
Back in those days, for instance, the grids of F1 GP races were still populated by royalty (Prince Bira) and the independently wealthy (with the likes of ‘brewing heir’ Piers Courage at one end of that particular continuum, and Swedish ‘brewing consumer’ Ulf Norinder at the other).
At least today the ‘playing field’ is a lot more level than if was back in those supposed ‘good old days.’
Sure, you still need a tidy sum to get yourself started and sorted, but should you or I had really, really wanted to have turned up to Teretonga and competed in the Three Hour race we could have – like 10th place finishers Tim Stanton and Leyton Tremain – acquired a modest little Peugeot 106 Rally which I seem to recall changing hands for between $8-9 and $14-15K not so long ago.
So. My message today is simple.
Bitch, moan and generally carry on like a sad sack if you must about the ‘parlous apparent state of motorsport here in NZ’ but from now on you will get short shrift from me.
On the evidence of the opening round of this year’s South Island Endurance Series New Zealand the reality is that motor racing in this country has rarely been in better shape.
And if you don’t agree, the fault, I suggest is with you and the way you perceive things. Rather than in the sport itself and the many and varied people within it simply trying to do their best.
Also, if not for the sake of the rest of us, do yourself a favour and stop looking backwards all the time.
Because?
Because as Scott McLaughlin said in his excellent biography (published at the end of 2019 and still available from Repco stores nationwide) quoting team boss Dick Johnson – ‘the only thing you get looking backwards is a sore neck!’
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