Feedback is important to people like me. Yet – save me from myself someone!!! – I’m still a reader as much as I am a writer. So, let me be clear from the outset this week – the following views are my own and mine alone.
Not only do I not expect everyone to agree with them (the ideas) or me in general, but I also welcome feedback on both.
And what is it that has got my feathers all a-ruffled this week? Surely you must have guessed already?
No? Then I’ll tell you. It was the – needless, heedless and, well everyone in the date and venue-making loop should have known better by now – decision to run the 66th annual New Zealand Grand Prix at Hampton Downs…..(and no that’s not the issue, I think that was a good decision given the circumstances) over the January 23-24 weekend, the SAME WEEKEND not as – say- a Tier 1 or 2-ish gathering of Muscle Cars, Pro 7 Mazdas and/or Hondas, at – again let’s say for argument’s sake – Teretonga, Levels or even Highlands Motorsport Park in the South Island.
Ho, no, promotor Speed Works and Hampton Downs announced last week that the NZ Grand Prix meeting would indeed be run over the Jan 23-24 weekend, THE VERY SAME WEEKEND as the Taupo Historic Grand Prix meeting at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, JUST DOWN EHE BLOODY ROAD at Taupo.
Fair call, no one (not even the Castrol TRS) ‘owns’ or even has ‘first dibs’ on a summer weekend.
What woke the cynic in me, however, was the fact that this summer the Castrol TRS will be run over just three rounds, TWO at Hampton Downs (over the Jan 23/24 & the Jan 30-31 weekends) and a third and final a fortnight later at Manfeild.
In theory – though this is entirely my own opinion, unfettered by any inner workings of the way you go about planning a meeting like the NZGP – you could have run the opening round of the 2021 Castrol TRS at Hampton Downs over the January 23-24 weekend.
In doing so you could celebrate the 100th year of organised motorsport in this country by calling it the NZ Motor Cup meeting with the winner of ‘the big race’ on the Sunday getting his name on the trophy exactly 100 years after it was first awarded (at Muriwai) on March 05 1921.
Everyone involved in the Castrol TRS could then spend the next week preparing for the ‘real biggie, the 66th annual NZGP meeting.
Instead they will be thrown into New Zealand’s most prestigious race meeting and by name- at least – biggest race with the barest minimum of preparation and I suspect, in front of a group (I hesitate to use the word ‘crowd’) of spectators wondering if it was they in fact who got the dates wrong.
I – of course – will be at Taupo, where the SAS Autoparts MSC NZ F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series cars, races and drivers (an order that series regulars are entirely happy about I might add) will again by the main drawcard at the Taupo Historic Grand Prix meeting.
This year the mana of the meeting will be even greater thanks to Ford agreeing to be the event’s marque partner.
Each year I’ve ‘worked’ the meeting it has got better – to the point where I now think of it as the North Island’s Skope Classic; and I can tell you something for nothing, it certainly ain’t going away.
What ultimately is the saddest thing about the Speed Works/Hampton Downs/MotorSport NZ decision to run the contemporary NZGP meeting up against the Taupo Historic GP one is that ‘the organisers’ are actually cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
Having now looked after the press and PR for the SAS Autoparts MSC F5000 Tasman Cup Revival Series for 18 years I know most of the drivers, family members, crew guys ‘n gals and yes, even the odd hanger-on, if not all by name at least with your typical Kiwi male ‘head nod & Maaate’ greeting and I can confidently tell you that each and every one of them is not just a fan of the category and the cars, a deep, purist passion for open wheeled, single seaters and their place in the scheme of things burns bright behind each pair of eyes.
I’ve seen the same flames flicker behind the eyes of the likes of current Castrol TRS Kiwi stars Liam Lawson and Marcus Armstrong and – several years ago now, I must admit, Earl Bamber and a (very) young Scott Dixon.
It’s something you can’t fake – or buy for that matter. You can’t split it either, meaning this year the NZGP will be run and won without the likes of SAS Autoparts main man David Banks, wife Brenda, son Codie and their ring-in crew, who otherwise would be supporting the Castrol TRS series in their historic Formula Fords or having a rare day off enjoying the view from the other side of the fence.
It will be the same for fellow Aucklanders Glenn Richards and Shayne Windelburn as well as most of the other regulars on the grid. And in this group, I would include some SAS Autoparts MSC alumni currently taking some time out from the series like McRae GM1 driving father and son pair Peter and Aaron Burson and Talon MR1/A ace Grant Martin.
Like me most will be at Taupo but in an ideal world would love to drop in to the NZGP meeting and check in who’s quick, who’s struggling and to see for themselves what the latest ‘hot young Kiwi’ is really like.
Which they could and I’d imagine would all definitely do if the NZGP was being run over the Jan 30/31 weekend.
As such the decision to run the two events over the same weekend, at circuits within – what? – a three-and-a-bit hour drive of each other is one which IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) is not in the best interests of either meeting, let alone our sport in general.
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