Well by now we’ve had the first two rounds of our Summer Race Series for 2010/11. We’ve seen some good racing at both Pukekohe and Hampton Downs and the good news is that the weather has held together and it has been nice to actually race without the rain and the terrible cold weather.
CLUB
MAG NOVEMBER ISSUE
RACE
REPORT
Well by now we’ve had the first two rounds of our Summer
Race Series for 2010/11. We’ve seen some
good racing at both Pukekohe and Hampton Downs and the good news is that the
weather has held together and it has been nice to actually race without the
rain and the terrible cold weather.
I recently had a meeting with the Series Coordinators
from the various classes that run at our meetings and would like to thank Steve,
Paul and Brett for their time. We are
working closely with the three classes (Production Muscle, Northern Muscle and
Classic Japanese) to plug and ensure that people racing get the best out of our
events. As part of this, we will look
closely at the 2011/12 Series and make a number of changes. In summary these will include:
1.
Reducing
to either a five or six round series.
2.
Dropping
the September Fathers’ Day meeting and not starting racing until late October
to give people more recovery time over the winter.
We are also going to try to arrange to have the various
classes grouped together at the tracks a little more. With this in my mind, at Hampton Downs if you
are parking on the skid pan, please get your trailer off the skid pan unless it
is effectively a covered trailer which you use as your garage workshop. If that is the case, we don’t expect your tow
car to be there instead.
The key issue however that we’ve been working on at the
Car Club is the costs of running our race meetings. With numbers reducing in the current economic
environment more than we had expected, we are struggling to make money out of
our race meetings. As a Club we can’t
afford to run race meetings at a loss.
In basic terms we need to work on the following things:
1.
Increasing
the number of cars on the grids again.
We have a number of strategies to do this and again are working with our
Series Coordinators and potentially other classes.
2.
Reducing
our costs. We are working on this but a
lot of the costs are fixed and if we don’t get enough numbers, we can quickly
run into a loss. Effectively it costs us
around 40% more to run a meeting at Hampton Downs than it does at Pukekohe. This is another factor that we’ve got to
consider as we go forward. Hopefully
Hampton Downs will build a small circuit in a few years time and that’s where
we should be racing at clubman’s level.
3.
Finally,
the other alternative is to put up our fees.
In the current economic environment that’s not really feasible and we do
accept that. However, in reality, motor
racing is still cheap in New Zealand by international standards and is
something that we’ve grown to expect.
The actual cost of going racing as an entry fee are a very low part of
the cost of running a car, and that’s something we all need to be understanding
of.
If anyone has any ideas on how we can do any of these
things I look forward to hearing from you, please don’t hesitate in getting in
contact with me.
Finally, as always, we would love more volunteers. While we are okay in some areas, we could
always do with more and there are still a number of areas where we are
critically short. If you have an
interest in motor sport, and are prepared and interested in doing more than
just driving, we would always love to hear from you. Please don’t hesitate to get in contact with
me.
I hope you all enjoy the racing over the Summer Season
and all enjoy it in the spirit that it is intended. It’s good to see people having a barbeque and
a beer and helping each other out when someone’s got a problem. It would be a sad day when any of these
things stop happening.
Race well and talk soon.
Nigel Smith
Chair
Race Committee
Auckland Car Club
