June Report
By the time you read this newsletter,
the Annual General Meeting of the club will have been held and a significant
discussion would have taken place about where the club will be heading in the
future. Part of this will relate to
whether the clubrooms and/or the section next door should be sold, but more
importantly it’s a chance for members to work out where they want their club to
go.
I was very interested to read
a report recently by the Hillary Commission on the future of sports clubs in
New Zealand and the change in demographics affecting sport. More people are playing sport informally, ie
not necessarily joining clubs. They see
a consolidation of clubs both within a particular sporting category and across
categories as being the way of the future.
In Auckland there has been considerable
talk about the clubs involved in motor sport working together. We are not necessarily talking about them all
combining, rather than working out who does what and trying not to compete with
each other.
While the amount of motor
sport has increased in Auckland in the recent years, overall the levels of
participation haven’t matched the increased number of events. In simple terms it means there are more race
meetings and less people at them. Part
of this is due to the general economic downturn but is also part of the ongoing
cycle where classes come and go and people move in and out of sport.
We have certainly witnessed
this in Auckland and find ourselves now often running our race meetings against
other events on at whichever track we are not at. It is not unusual now for just about every
weekend to have events on at both Hampton Downs and at Pukekohe. This has meant that our ability to draw what
we would consider to be full fields has been restricted.
For the 2011/12 summer series
we basically have two grids available each round. This is on top of the normal regular classes
that we have like muscle cars, classic Japanese and saloon car classes. We are busy working with other classes to try
to fill these grids. In the last season
we offered some club sport as an entry level alternative to get people used to
our events and then hopefully to feel comfortable to step up from club sport to
race. The new aces class plus category
(all cars 80seconds plus at Pukekohe) is an attempt to also develop an entry
level class for motor racing. While
classic Japanese does do this, it does have some restrictions around ages of
cars. We have been working closely with
Manukau Tech out at Pukekohe and their race engineering program where they
build race cars. They have been building
little Honda civics and Integras which can be bought for around $3,000 to
$5,000 in race ready form. These make
ideal race cars with roll cage, seats and belts in place and even a spare engine. They might not be the quickest car out there,
but they certainly would get people out racing at an affordable level.
So things constantly
change. The club rooms will be part of
this debate no doubt. Twenty years ago
the club rooms were the centre of the Auckland Car Club's activities, and apparently
it was often so busy that you couldn’t even get to the bar to buy a drink? People would spill over into the carpark
after a race meeting to have a beer and a catch up.
Today we are lucky if we get
10 people on a Thursday night. Most of
those that come are only there to get a licence to race as we have our licence
examiners there each week. Is the club
rooms really necessary now for a motor racing club? This is something that the club needs to
discuss. Obviously if we could find
decent tenants for upstairs and get a good return, then the situation would be
a bit different. But in recent years we
have seen a drop in income from the club rooms of around $25,000 per annum and
this has severely affected the club's operating surplus.
In running race events, we
always aim to break even. We are not
necessarily there to make a large amount of money at a race so if we are not
making money out of race, the club rooms are not making money, and our
membership is declining, you get the picture quickly that things are going to
look pretty bleak pretty quickly. It is
for this reason that the club has looked at the need to sell the section and
also to consider whether the club rooms themselves are necessary. We are reluctant to put up costs because that
will further decrease the numbers of those participating or belonging to the
club.
At the end of the day, its
your club so we need you to be involved.
If you aren’t going to use the club rooms or they are not important to
you in terms of your being a member of the club, we need to know that as a
committee.
As always, we are still
looking for volunteers so keep your ear to the ground and any leads you get
please pass them on either to me or to one of the other committee members. This is again part of the demographic change
as people in the modern world get busier they are less likely to give their
time as volunteers. With more motor
racing events, and fewer volunteers in the pool, let alone having another
circuit, again we are facing restrictions on our ability to run motor racing
events. Your help is necessary.
Finally, the winter series is
upon us and again by the time you have read this the first round would have
been held. Auckland Car Club is taking
initiative here and running the winter series as a joint venture with the
Historic Racing Club. This shows good
business sense, and a practical approach by both clubs to share resources and
run events together. It is the way of
the future.
As always, drive it like you
stole it and we look forward to seeing you on the black stuff at the track
soon.
