Originally Posted by
nigel watts
I've been to all three festivals now, buying tickets, programmes, food etc. I enjoyed the first two better than the BMW event simply because Bruce McLaren & Chris Amon were boyhood heros of mine whereas BMW doesn't mean much to me at all. I did enjoy the HMC races immensely - well done Dale.
I was however quite shocked at the lack of spectators on the day I attended. The grandstands were only about a third full at best. Thinking back to the 60's when Pukekohe enjoyed large crowds of race fans, there was no TV to speak of, no Super 15 Rugby, the All Blacks played very few games, there were no swap meets, hot rod shows, classic car events, Drag Racing etc etc. I enjoy classic racing, classic motorbikes, hot rod & classic car shows - there's something on somewhere nearly every weekend. There's huge competition for every spectator dollar. The kids are not that interested in historic racing but they do turn out in droves for drifting and other Japanese car based events [and let's not forget the wet T Shirt competitions]. For classic racing you need to find a way to entice along the teens & twenties, or classic historic racing will die a slow death along with the circuits.
I'm sure you all know all of this already. So it's not about apartment owners inviting along non paying guests [an extra couple of hundred tickets sold is not going to make that much difference].
I know the promoters are trying very hard to come up with events that will attract the punters, so I'm not knocking their efforts BUT they haven't cracked it yet.
What's the answer - buggered if I know, but there must surely be one. HMC is a step in the right direction.
Maybe if everyone on the forum puts their collective thinking caps on we can come up with some workable solutions.