Putting back in what you get out of it!
Hi All
I have been enjoying the site for some time now Steve and thank you for starting a NZ forum that caters for our tastes so well. I have been officially racing for 41 years and probably 5 years before that as a pesky "boy racer" on the street.
First car was a hotted up Austin A35 van, that progressed to a Daimler SP250 called Charles. Moved into 3.8 E Type Jag (sold to Dave Silcock) and then a 4.2 E type that became the first racer at the Club circuit at Pukekohe and hill climbed it a couple of times. Terrible handling car! Just about plowed up the tarmac under racing.
Bought and modified a Lotus Elan for the new 2 litre sports car series in about 1973 and flared the guards to fit Formula Ford wheels and tyres. Raced at Levin in the first race of the series. A spectacular spin at Cabbage tree cnr by me took out a number of cars. Moved up to a Mallock U2 for a season and a half and had some good results, even earned some prize money! Tried a Formula Vee for half a season then got married. Sold up Monaro tow car and E type Jag to get a house!
In 1980 I started to race a 1750 Alfa Spider then moved to an ex Eric Swinbourn GTV 2000. Great car those Alfa's! Bought the old Copper Tone Alfa that was by then a Sports Sedan and tidied it up for Classic racing. Cars started to get faster in the late 1980's so built up a Corvette Stingray with guru Duncan Fox for the new Sports & GT series that had the Porsched and Ferrari's dominating it at the time We were lucky enough to win the series 1992/3 and 1993/4 before the lighting Direct Porsche turbo's came on the scene!
In 1997, Duncan and I got the McLaren Bug. We joined the fledgling Bruce McLaren Trust and bought the ex Peter Revson M16C Indycar from California. It came with an underpowered 5 lt engine, but we soon installed a 6 lt Rodeck making 710 bhp ex Keiron Wills. Had some good racing with the indy car amongst the few F5000's that were around in those days.
At the last Wigram the car was getting to 8,500 revs down the back straight, which equated to 194 mph, but not long afterwards the engine consumed inself. Probably high speed remorse!
In 1999 we heard about the McLaren M12 Can-Am car in a Japanese restaurant and I headed off with a big wad of yen to see what the car was like. It turned out to be a complete time warp car having been wheeled of the track straight into the restaurant for 27 years. This was the start of the Aucklanders going to Australia to race in 2000 with five cars.
there were four F5000's and the M12. The following year we invited the South Island F5000 owners and took 11 cars to Sandown. This was a great era of building up the F5000 series to its strong position today. I was lucky enough to race a Talon F5000 and a McLaren M22 F5000 through from 2003 to 2009 that we managed to purchase in the USA and bring back to NZ.
In 2003, Chris Watson and I started down the long journey of building a circuit. I felt that I had got so much satisfaction and pleasure out of motor sport, that I should be giving something back to the sport. clearly there was only one circuit for half the population and it was difficult for us to hire Pukekohe in the peak season. The last 9 years has been a roller coaster ride of getting Hampton Downs firstly consented, then built and finally running profitably. Chris and I had been promoting race meetings through the 1990's with the Formula Libre Series and then started up the Historic Racing Club to concentrate on further H&C race promotion.
2010 saw the offical opening of Hampton Downs with the succesful NZ Festival of Motor Racing, celebrating Bruce McLaren.
Since then we have run the Amon, BMW and this year the celebration is of Denny Hulme's career.
One of my greatest pleasures is seeing people enjoying Hampton Downs and at time it is quite surreal to think that cows used to wander over this land only a few years ago. We sure stuffed that farm up!
Anyway that's a short tale of my motorsport life and why I believe you get out of life what you put into it!
Regards
Tony Roberts
