Well, it had to happen one day. We finally had to make the hard call and cancel a race meeting. Apologies to all of you looking forward to running on Sunday 28 November at Pukehoke, but that day finally arrived.
AUCKLAND
CAR CLUB - DECEMBER RACE REPORT
Red Flag! Red Flag! Red Flag!
Well,
it had to happen one day. We finally had
to make the hard call and cancel a race meeting. Apologies to all of you looking forward to
running on Sunday 28 November at Pukehoke, but that day finally arrived.
To
put it down to the current economic climate is certainly correct, but it was
not the only factor. In effect we had a
perfect storm with about four or five factors coming together to cause the
meeting to simply not be viable.
A
lot of people have asked me if it was a hard call to cancel the meeting, and
while it may have been emotionally it was a very simple call to make
financially. When you lose less money by
not running a race meeting than you would by running it, it is not rocket
science to work out that you would cancel it.
We made the call on the Wednesday so that everyone had plenty of notice.
So
what went wrong?
1. Certainly the current economic conditions means that people are
less likely to run.
2. A number of cars had done the first two rounds and actually
blown up. People don’t have the money to
fix them.
3. Our extra grid for the event, the Star Cars, had only got seven
cars to the last round, and had blown up half of these which weren’t
repaired. That left three Star Cars.
4. Northern Muscle were not going to run as they were running with
the Central Muscle Cars the following weekend at the Thunder in the Park
meeting.
5. Finally, people entering late.
If you don’t enter well in advance, we will be faced with making these
calls. We don’t take entries on the day,
and we need to probably close off on the Thursday so that we’ve got ample time
to put all the paperwork together on the Friday.
At
Auckland Car Club we will try to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I did note though that at the start of the
Season while I had booked out rounds, it was not certain that all of these
would run. We have cancelled the Hampton
Downs round in early April simply because it was too close to the Taupo round,
we’ve now had to pull out of the Taupo round because we can’t get resources in
Taupo that weekend. This brings us back
to a five series calendar for the 2010/11 year with this probably around where
it will settle down in the future. We
are certainly looking at five or six rounds for 2011/12.
So
what can you do to help so this doesn’t happen again? Firstly get your car out and come
racing. Secondly talk to your mates and
make them do the same.
As
a Committee, Auckland Car Club is working together to find more Clubs and
Classes to get on the grid. Our long
term aim is to have six grids at 15 cars at each meeting so making it
financially viable and we can hold the entry fees at the level they are. We’ve certainly worked on some leads up to
and following 28 November and I will keep you informed on these.
In
the meanwhile, we are a grid down again for the 23 January as the Northern
Muscle Cars are going to run at the Chris Amon Festival at Hampton Downs which
is on the same weekend. We’ve picked up
Formula First to replace them but this leaves us with only five grids so we
will run a one hour race again and hopefully see some good entries for that.
As
a Committee we are working towards getting the grid numbers up and also looking
at how we can reduce costs associated with running our race meetings. We need over 70 cars to break even at
Pukekohe and probably around 85 for a break even at Hampton Downs. These are significant numbers. The cost of staging motor sport events have
gone through the roof to put it bluntly and the coming on stream of Hampton
Downs has actually pushed the cost of motor sports up not down.
Finally,
as always we need more volunteers and officials. If your car is parked up and you still feel
the need to turn up to the track, why not actually do something? There are plenty of jobs and I’m sure we can
find one that each of you would like.
I’ve just spent the weekend at Thunder in the Park being an assistant clerk
of the course and race control for three days.
Apart from being about 5 kilograms lighter afterwards because it was
about 42 degrees in the race control room, I learnt a lot. Having people that have actually competed in
motor sport acting as officials is a bonus when you are running motor sport
meetings. So if you have hung up your
helmet or can’t afford to get your car on the track, come and help us run a
meeting we’d love to see you.
So
until the 23 January have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year and get those
cars sorted and out on the grid.
Nigel
Smith
Chairman
of ACC Race Committee
Auckland Car Club Race
Meetings
23rd January at Pukekohe
20th February at Hampton Downs
Classes Running
- ·
Racing Saloons
- ·
Production Saloons & Targa Cars
- ·
Production Muscle Cars
- ·
Classic Japanese
- ·
Northern Muscle Cars (HD only)
- ·
Formula First (Pukekohe Only)
- ·
Shifter Karts (HD only)
Entries at www.motorsportentry.com
Queries to: Race@aucklandcarclub.org.nz
