Hampton Downs is Sold

[mikuni]

Originally Posted by socram

Tony and Sue Quinn were painting fences...

Really?

I'm extremely excited about all the new development. The festival is sneaking up on me and I was thinking about giving it a miss, but I think I will drop in for a couple of hours to have a look at the cars and the new aspects of Hampton.

[Racetroll]

I think you will find it was Tony and Christina Quinn... Socram is confusing his owners, Tony and Sue Roberts were part of the original guard.

[socram]

Originally Posted by Racetroll

I think you will find it was Tony and Christina Quinn... Socram is confusing his owners, Tony and Sue Roberts were part of the original guard.

Whoops! It was the apartment manager who said Sue... Must have been a slip of the tongue. Would have been a coincidence if it had been Sue of course!

I think people going to the Porsche Festival next weekend (and the weekend after of course) are going to be amazed at the progress since last year and next year it is going to be as different again, hopefully with the planned admin/café/museum building between the apartment blocks done.

It will be interesting to see how drivers take to the International track as I believe the existing National track is tremendous.

[Goat Boy]

The international track won't offer a lot for spectators I don't think but it will certainly make things more interesting for drivers, probably hand back a bit of advantage to cars with more power. I am very excited about this facility which will become one of the best in Australasia once complete I believe.

[socram]

Interesting that Tony Quinn probably agrees that the current track is pretty good. He also admits that no one is too keen when on longer tracks, cars are out of sight for too long, particularly so with smaller grids that have become the norm in too many classes.

I doubt I will ever race the long track (I hung up my helmet after weekend 1 of the Festival yesterday!), but the corner where the new track joins the old looks particularly tricky, but for a driving challenge and a great photographic spot, turns 2 & 3 on the current track must be amongst the best in the world.

Lots more tarseal down in the paddock areas and the new hospitality suites look superb. Race control seemed to be working well and the commentator now has a few screens to cover the parts out of sight.

Downstairs office was working well and all in all, great to see so much progress.

[Goat Boy]

Just found out that the F5000's won't be at HD this weekend

[superstock]

Originally Posted by Goat Boy

Just found out that the F5000's won't be at HD this weekend

thatll lose me

numbers did seem down

[Goat Boy]

Yeah I doubt I will make the trip now

[20b]

Originally Posted by Goat Boy

Just found out that the F5000's won't be at HD this weekend

That's been out there for quite some time for people to see. However, the Formula Libre class has a few 5000's competing as well as a host of Can-Ams and classic open wheelers. Probably going to be one of the biggest Libre fields in the festival's history. Last weekend's festival was great, some truly awesome pieces of machinery.

[Goat Boy]

I didn't look TBH I just assumed, couldn't have made it this weekend past anyway. I might still go if the weather comes to the party, which I think it might.

[E36ST]

I must confess I've never really understood that meeting i.e. why have more or less the same thing two weekends in a row. If they had one meeting at HD and another at say Pukekohe or something then I'd certainly be keen to compete - get to do two great North Island circuits.

The South Is. series works well, Highlands, Ruapuna, Levels & Teretonga each a weekend apart. Great for people coming from overseas too.

[socram]

Originally Posted by E36ST

I must confess I've never really understood that meeting i.e. why have more or less the same thing two weekends in a row. If they had one meeting at HD and another at say Pukekohe or something then I'd certainly be keen to compete - get to do two great North Island circuits.

I think that the answer to that is fairly clear. Initially (McLaren Festival 2010), and I think, 2011, it was indeed at Pukekohe as well as HD, but with so many overseas entrants, having to shift everything down the road was a logistical nightmare, probably only helped by the generous support of Calvin Bonney and a couple of others.

At Pukekohe, the facilities were so bad that cars got swamped/waterlogged even though theoretically, they were under cover. Pukekohe's revamp has made life much more difficult as paddock space is severely limited so for those of us needing to spend time between race control/time keeping on the inside of the track and a mix of cars/drivers located all over the place, many likely to be on the outside, communications and assembling dummy grids for example would be a total nightmare. Having to keep opening and closing the gates and no tunnel for track crossing just shows up why HD is a far superior environment for competitors. Only the covered grandstand at Pukekohe (if you are prepared to pay) has an advantage for spectators over HD.

Fast forward to today and the HD garages now that the upper storey has been built, are watertight.

The Festival has always been an HRC initiative and as the HRC Directors owned HD, they didn't then need to pay out to hire Pukekohe again, as the initial Festival lost money.

Nowadays, there are far fewer overseas drivers prepared to ship their cars to NZ so the F5000 grid for weekend 1 this year was down on previous years, but as posted above, they will be in the Formula Libre grid for weekend 2.

The programme does now vary between weekends with some classes only running 1 weekend and even the other classes may have different cars running each weekend.

Our own grid for weekend 1 was 33 cars and weekend two is a touch over 40 at the last count, with 18 of them who didn't run weekend 1.

There is some concern of a lack of support for some classes and Porsche the sponsors) didn't want any BMW grids - understandably.

If you have suggestions for extra classic/historic classes, then by all means state them as I'm sure the Festival directors will be happy to hear!

Now that Tony Quinn rather than HRC owns HD, although the 2017 Festival honours Kenny Smith, it remains to be seen what will change. Some classes are growing whilst others are shrinking.

Adding Pre-65s to weekend 2 for the first time is one very positive addition to the programme and I suspect that the racing will be as good if not better than weekend 1 - even without me running!

[socram]

Well, the inaugural HD101 looked to have been a success! Tremendous turnout of the GT cars and as predicted in the post above, that corner coming onto the original track has the official name "Double *******"! (The board doesn't like the real word and censored it out! Suffice to say, the commentators usually referred to it as DB...) A typical bit of Tony Quinn's attitude!

On a different tack altogether, this message board seems to have almost fallen over for the NZ threads. So few threads over the last few months have had any posts at all and no new threads. It used to be so lively and also informative. No longer a 'must check in every day'.

[Goat Boy]

Hi Ray, I was there and thoroughly enjoyed it - it will replace my annual Pukekohe visit for the Supercars from now on.

Tony Quinn has done a great job so well done him. The big new car park out the back seemed to work well as well. There looked to be one structure yet to be put in place, it was a large red truss bridge structure. Not sure where this was meant to go or whether it was just a leftover from something else - my thoughts were it could possibly be a gantry bridge for the start/finish line to hang lights off etc but also give the ability for officials to cross the track during races. Anyone know anything?

One thing I REALLY think they need for next year is a big screen sitting on the bank opposite the hillside by the hairpin, with live timing showing (no need for camera footage necessarily) as it became impossible to tell who was leading after the first round of pit stops. As a consequence, we didn't realize that the Ferrari which was spun on the last lap was actually in a potential podium position.

Great race though, great day and really like the new facilities. NZ's number one circuit without a doubt now.

[CDM]

Originally Posted by Goat Boy

One thing I REALLY think they need for next year is a big screen sitting on the bank opposite the hillside by the hairpin, with live timing showing (no need for camera footage necessarily) as it became impossible to tell who was leading after the first round of pit stops. As a consequence, we didn't realize that the Ferrari which was spun on the last lap was actually in a potential podium position.

Easy as to get live results on your phone these days, race monitor or speedhive app is all you need to keep you 100% up to date

[Goat Boy]

Yes all good in theory but there is zero 2degrees or Vodafone coverage there. Might have something to do with the prison down the road.

[GHOGH]

When did TV3 last cover a motor race? It looked like they were a bit rusty.

Some of the in-car or behind-car cam work was not as sharp as the V8SC meetings (they must have some good video gear)
Maybe some positioning of the microphones could changed or added to if they do the coverage next year.

Otherwise it was ok for the number of cameras/ equipment they had.

[20b]

Originally Posted by GHOGH

When did TV3 last cover a motor race? It looked like they were a bit rusty.

Some of the in-car or behind-car cam work was not as sharp as the V8SC meetings (they must have some good video gear)
Maybe some positioning of the microphones could changed or added to if they do the coverage next year.

Otherwise it was ok for the number of cameras/ equipment they had.

To be fair, TV3 and their crew are working at probably a tenth of the cost of what Supercars production value is. From my brief viewing, it all looks like it was pretty decent quality. Not to dissimilar from the usual Hampton Downs coverage we get for other events, but good enough for a first time event this size.

Interesting to note some of the comments saying there were 20,000 people there. Not sure if those are official ticket numbers, but the crowd looked spread around. Can't say whether it was or wasn't the biggest crowd ever seen there. I imagine the V8 SuperTourers first meeting or WRC super special stage were on par.

What did we all thinking of the marketing for the weekend? I felt it was okay, but all I saw were billboards with Hampton Downs 101, a date, and a car. Not that Joe Blog has any idea what any of that could mean. Perhaps it could've been promoted better. Supercar style even with the cars going up the Queen Street or something.

If old mate Quinn wants this to be the biggest event in the country, he's going to have to put a helluva lot more effort into getting some of the more casual racing people to fork out $80 for a Sunday drive out to Hampton Downs.

[socram]

Judging by the interview with TQ, he knows that there are some aspects that could be better. He is a realist after all. I totally agree that a couple of well placed screens would be useful, but there has been a lot of private money thrown at the track. It hasn't received a cent of Government or council money, unlike Pukekohe, which is arguably, no better than before they threw some money at it.

There is still no traffic tunnel or bridge and the paddock at larger entry meetings is split between inner and outer - a total nightmare when trying to communicate with drivers who may be running a car in two classes and the need for two dummy grids and extra manpower to organize them. Very limited trailer parking and minimal toilet facilities in the paddock.

HD will I am sure, continue to improve, but the damage done to local motorsport by the minimal grids - televised for several years - hurt the sport more than most seem to realise. Personally, and feel free to differ, but I believe we have almost lost a generation of potential spectators, because what was on offer was not really worth televising.

I'd agree that maybe the numbers have been higher at a couple of earlier meetings, but having free access to the paddock is a huge plus. The 'log' benches scattered around for seating seemed to be appreciated, though like Goodwood with 50,000 people a day, many will take their own camp chairs anyway.

I'm not sure what the immediate future plans are at HD, (they keep changing) but Pukekohe is still first and foremost, a horse track, owned by the horse people, which is a shame, as there would be huge potential if it was a genuine Motorsport venue.

I haven't had an issue with Vodafone at HD on my $30 phone - not that I ever use it other than to let my wife know I am on the way home.

[RogerH]

I understand that while the new section of the track was a welcome addition, part of it was uneven and bounced the lighter cars around. Evidently TQ is aware of this and no doubt it will be soon sorted.

[socram]

I'd be very interested in what others think about the extended track.

Not having driven the new part, my observation as a spectator may or may not be relevant.

Firstly, the new extension is effectively out of bounds to spectators, at the moment anyway, other than maybe the corner where the new joins the old, so the spectator experienced hasn't really been enhanced.

Secondly, having 6 lap races instead of the 8 on the National track, effectively denies spectators the opportunity to see the cars as often.

In an endurance race, this probably isn't much of an issue, so maybe the future is very much the National circuit, which for my money is stunning to drive and great for taking photographs. Probably not ideal for spectators wanting to see a lot of the track from one position.

The extended track certainly saw more minor panel damage in one of our series races, than we'd had over the last three seasons, but that is probably just racing.

With 43 cars in a handicap race, on a new track, maybe some drivers weren't using their mirrors as much as they should have...