Quote Originally Posted by nigel watts View Post
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.
You guys here on this forum are a great bunch and show your concern by the fact that you are prepared to post!!! but lets not get carry'd away and snipe at one another!! after all AMCO called me RICH, and if he only knew, but im not about to take that outta txt. You all have great ideas and fantastic comments and you all are rite, in different ways!! i can only view what i know and think from my own personal past learning's, in particular historic racing in California. For the size of the surrounding population in California you could say that the HD Festival crowd was huge? in proportion? so that would mean last weekends Supertourers had a US NASCAR size crowd (in-proportion)? my 3 day gate pass at Monterey was $195USD, could you image how many spectators we would get if we charged that? NOBODY!! yet in the USA that is just the accepted price to pay for the capital outlay in the said facility, yet here at HD even some thought the weekends $30 was too much, i had such a good time i felt like giving them more money when i left, WHAT A BARGAIN. When i ship my Mustang to the Shelby Nationals at Somona(San Francisco) 2 years ago i tried to get out of the $1000US entry fee as i knew the event organizer personally, but he said he couldn't do this as the track hire alone was $30K a day, i felt guilty and paid as this was a once in a life time bucket list adventure for me!! but he said if the racers don't pay then they don't have an event, quite a sorry state if you ask me!! and that's why when i bought my American mate down 2 years ago, he couldn't believe how cheap it was and he was winning on the exchange rate as well. I actually shipped his Mustang to NZ and back cheaper than he can haul it up to Kent, Washington and back to his CA home. We are spoilt here NZ and we are truly the last frontier of the wages come poor-man racer, yet i had to travel overseas to find this out. Lets look at our Aussie Trans Am racers, they had the time of there lives, infact i should post some of the E-mails of thanks that myself, Jim, Tony and Chris received, they said they have never been treated so well at a major motorsport event and how well organised, welcoming and friendly we all are(take a bow you guys) just the little things like the grid stickers on your steering wheel, they had never seen that before and will now use that back in Aus!! I guess what im tryin to say is lets look at the BIG picture, and maybe for Hulme next year we may draw more spectators? but i have a funny feeling that RMG(post 51) is rite, that kiwi crowds are a fickle lot, and McLaren was a great crowd because it and the track was new, bit like the Supertourers? the recession we(and the world) is in is only a "state of mind" so once we get over that i guess things will look up and maybe, just maybe we will see some crowds back at Historic events, and really that's all there is too it.

Dale Mathers