amaroo park races from the 1960

. An open scramble meeting took place on August 26, marking the first event at Amaroo Park and combining with an official opening ceremony. Popular with spectators and easy for Sydney's Channel 7 to telecast, it became the backbone of the Sydney touring car scene, a scene which once consisted mostly of privateers who have largely disappeared since Amaroo closed, with the major touring car teams now operating from Melbourne and south-east Queensland. Nine houses? [1], The circuit reopened on 31 May 1970 with much improved spectator facilities and racing now run by the ARDC,[1] with the first of the motorcycle endurance races which came to be known as the Castrol Six Hour run by the Willoughby District Motorcycle Club later that year.[2]. The first car meeting did not take place until March 12, 1967 and was a relatively low-key closed affair for Country Club members, with around 1,000 spectators watching club races featuring entrants from the Australian Racing Drivers Club, Australian Automobile Racing Club and the New South Wales Road Racing Club. A programme of upgrades were carried out around the track, including the construction of a new race control and commentary tower at the end of the pit lane. 1978 Better Brakes 10,000, Amaroo Park Touring Cars - YouTube And the most sickening experience I ever saw at Amaroo was the Historic Meeting of Aug 1982 which saw the ex Gulf Team GT40 spin out going up the main straight hill, get out of shape on the last bend and destroying itself comprehensively starting against the earthen bank on the left and on and on shedding bits as if in slow motion. https://www.youtube.com/super100mphThe return of Bob Morris, Mazda RX7. Didn't Jacques Lafitte test a Ralt RT4 prior ro the AGP at Calder Park. Known as Wunderlich for sponsorship reasons, the turn was known during the 1970s as Ron Hodgson Corner due to sponsorship from Sydney's then largest Holden dealer, was the final turn on the circuit and led back onto the pit straight. Frank Gardner's JPS Team BMW and its drivers Jim Richards and Tony Longhurst dominated from 1985 to 1987 (Richards in the 635 CSi was unbeaten at Amaroo in 1985 winning all 12 AMSCAR races, the ATCC round and the Endurance Championship race), while Gibson Motorsport, first with Nissan and later with Holden, also contested the series in the later years of Group A and into the new 5.0L V8 formula introduced in 1993, with Jim Richards winning in the team's Nissan Skyline GT-R in 1992 while Mark Skaife won for Gibson driving a Holden VP Commodore in 1993. Amaroo Park NSW Australia - The Nostalgia Forum Amaroo Park held its own touring car series from 1971 to 1993, initially as the Sun-7 Chesterfield Series and then under various names, including the "AMSCAR Series" from 1982. It was closed in 1998. Drag Racing 1964; Drag Racing 1965; Drag Racing 1966; Drag Racing 1968; Drag Racing 1969; Drag Racing 1970's . The ARDC lost money promoting the Super Touring Bathurst 1000 from 1997 to 1999 and this circuit was sold to recover some of the loss. 1981 Amaroo Amscar Race - YouTube Amaroo, what an awesome place to go to a race meeting. The following table lists the winners of the annual AMSCAR Series. Free shipping for many products! After a second bike meeting in August, the next major event was the new Castrol 1000 for production machines. . A full length Grand Prix circuit was planned but never built. That 85 event was the last race on the original layout. Drag Racing 1970; Drag Racing 1980's; . Set in a natural amphitheatre, Amaroo Park was a dream for spectators as much as it was a nightmare for a tyre on a V8 touring car. The increasing national popularity of the Australian Touring Car Championship, improvements in Channel 7's ATCC telecast, and the 1991 economic recession which saw a number of privateer teams only racing in the two ATCC rounds in Sydney and the Bathurst 1000, all gradually reduced the grids until the AMSCAR Series was discontinued after the 1993 season. Championship races held: 38 When Gibson retired from driving at the end of 1983, he would be replaced from 1984 in the Bluebird by Queenslander Gary Scott, the son of former open-wheel star, the late Glyn Scott, while Christine Gibson continued to drive the Pulsar EXA until she joined her husband in retirement at the end of 1984. I'd like to but you're closer to it than I am Of course and Frank G raced the Corvair there too, didn't he? Championship races held: 65 Allan Grice dispatching Colin Bond over Bitupave Hill on the opening lap of the opening race in 1976 is case in point and so was the wild knockdown, drag-out second race in 93 that signalled the arrival of five-litre V8s [later to become V8 Supercars] as a formula. Here is the plan of Amaroo taken from Sports Car World, July 1959. . This allowed the participation of the 3.5-litre BMW 635 CSi of JPS Team BMW, much to the displeasure of most competing teams, especially those racing the 3.0L Ford Capri's which were well suited to the tight track and had come to dominate the series since 1975. Once the heart of Sydney's motor racing scene, Amaroo Park went from a stuttering start to achieve great popularity, only to be overtaken by larger, better-funded projects. The 1.2 mile course began on the valley floor before climbing steeply up the hillside, through a fast kink, before looping back on itself and plunging back down the valley, round a lake and back to the pits and paddock. Tony Longhurst achieved more AMSCAR series wins than any other driver, with success in 1986, 1989, 1990 and 1991. There were only basic facilities however; no power or shelter in the paddock, few toilets and no seating of any kind for spectators, just rocky outcrops. The official fastest race lap records at the Amaroo Park are listed as: Last edited on 13 December 2022, at 21:54, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "ASTC 1997 Amaroo Park Round 8 Results", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Amaroo_Park&oldid=1127283407, This page was last edited on 13 December 2022, at 21:54. We always thought that a car would go over the fence and into the pitlane. The course was extremely challenging, with numerous spills and mechanical difficulties encountered making it unpopular with riders. Amaroo Park - Wikipedia Uncategorized ; June 21, 2022 amaroo park races from the 1960 . [2], The first motorcycle meeting was held on 26 February with a 30 lap production race won by Larry Simons on a BSA Mk.ll Spitfire in heavy rain. By 1979, the series had become so successful it had a bigger prize purse than the national championship! Oran Park is about to go the same way. Further disaster came in 1986, this time during a Formula Mondiale race at the August meeting. Despite this unpromising start to motor racing activities, plans for the rest of the complex continued. In the early Group C years of the AMSCAR series, several Sydney based drivers who regularly competed in the annual four round, three race per round series became household names through the national telecast on Channel 7 (at the time, Seven's only touring car telecasts were from Amaroo, Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne, and Bathurst as the ABC was main broadcast host of the ATCC until the end of 1984). i vividly remember a guy in a gemini (you know, those really boxy old ones from isuzu) getting catastrophically sideways in a manner that seemed to contradict the laws of physics the instructors were alarmed and baffled, i think they wanted to condemn the car on the spot! Most race wins: Dick Johnson, Tony Longhurst, Allan Moffat (four apiece). How the Photo Download Works. All rights reserved. At fourteen years of age, and with my hormones in a tangle, I was lucky enough to be at the pit counter, directly opposite the VIP stand where she was guest of honour, at Albert Park. Ready for inspection in February 1962, it would take another six months for the necessary licence to be granted. mounted on that big supercharger thrusting Phallus-like in front of the Healey 3000 motor . Order a Photographic Print or a Download. brilliant shotsthose were the days (and of course a lot earlier than that). Prior to 1983, Honda Corner had no runoff on the inside of the track and was earth banking surrounded by a concrete wall. Although I now live in Adelaide, when I get back to Sydney to visit family, I always go back to Amaroo. Amaroo Park, NSW. The dog-leg (or the flip-flop, depending on your generation) was a driver favourite, as was the kink at the end of pit straight, and the rolling left-hander at Suttons since replicated in the reverse direction at The Bend Motorsport Park while the bridge overpass was unique in Australian motorsport. What a waste of a race circuit, that is an absolute disgrace. Although I now live in Adelaide, when I get back to Sydney to visit family, I always go back to Amaroo. Oh, and the Sydney Showgrounds! The increasing national popularity of the Australian Touring Car Championship, improvements in Channel 7's ATCC telecast, and the 1991 economic recession which saw a number of privateer teams only racing in the two ATCC rounds in Sydney and the Bathurst 1000, all gradually reduced the grids until the AMSCAR Series was discontinued after the 1993 season. Originally posted by Andrew Fellowes Did many internationals race there? I remember being part of the line of binoculars trained in her direction across the track.I digress. Contents 1 Background 2 History 2.1 Demise 3 Broadcast 4 Winners 5 Multiple winners 5.1 By driver 5.2 By team 5.3 By manufacturer 6 Event sponsors 7 References Background [ edit] Soon it was hosting a meeting every month as Short Circuit racing underwent a popular boom. Many of the iconic moments in Supercars Championship history played out at the challenging 2.62km circuit near Narellan in Sydney's south-west. The Sierras would have been quick around there I would imagine. This was mostly as the large number of Sydney privateers who usually filled the grid in the nationally televised (by Ch.7) Bathurst 1000, rarely raced outside of NSW or Queensland due to limited budgets. After holding its own touring car series from 1971 to 1993 (initially as the Sun-7 Chesterfield Series and then under various names, including AMSCAR), in 1974 the top-tier Australian Touring Car Championship arrived. However, needing more money to fund his Hamilton Island development, Williams sold the track to a Japanese investment group in 1987, leading to the circuit's closure. As the decades passed by Amaroo slowly faded in prominence andthe Sydney suburbs began to approach. The last Australian Touring Car Championship round to take place at the circuit was in 1994. Arthur Hayes, ARDC member number one, waved the chequered flag to bring to a close 31 years of continuous racing activity at one of Australia's most popular circuits. While the circuit continued to draw a bumper crowd, the championship moved its round to the brand new Queensland Raceway for 1999. . Eventually, property developers acquired the land for $4 million and began tearing down the infrastructure. Amaroo Park Raceway was a 1.930km (1.199mi) motor racing circuit located in Annangrove, New South Wales, in the present-day north-western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Order a Photographic Print or a Download. This would have fatal consequences for Amaroo Park, since the ARDC was offered the opportunity of the lease and management of the new venue, which proved an offer too good to refuse. Notice the two roads going off at the top right corner of the pic? Amaroo Park started on the short pit straight, and from there the track had a kink to the right up towards Bitupave Hill. [5] This allowed the V8 powered Holden Commodores, Ford Falcons and Chevrolet Camaros, as well as the V12 Jaguar XJS, to compete in the series alongside the under 3.5-litre cars such as the BMW 635 CSi, the Ford Capris and the growing list of rotary powered Mazda RX-7s, as well as the factory Nissan Bluebird turbo's. Drainage had also proved an issue, with the circuit subject to frequent flooding, particularly at its lowest reaches. It was only from the beginning of the "Group A" category in Australia in 1985 that the headline teams started appearing in the series on a more regular basis, with part of the reason being that as Group A was new to Australia in 1985, the AMSCAR Series gave teams valuable testing under race conditions (also because from 1985 Amaroo would hold an annual round of the ATCC). He also started on pole eight times and started on the front row 12 times! The dirt circuit had a house in the middle of it by the time the main circuit closed. The race was run as a Butchers Picnic as a salute to the very first meetings at the circuit where the first races run were indeed Butchers' Picnics. 1983 Amscar Series | Round 4 | Amaroo Park Raceway - YouTube It would never return. It prompted the New South Wales ACU to suspend the track's licence for two wheel racing. [3] The second round of the series saw the one-off appearance of long time Ford driver Allan Moffat in a Ron Hodgson Motors Holden LX Torana SS A9X Hatchback. Amaroo Park 31th May 1970 - 70-AM31570-064. The brainchild of entrepreneurial developer Keith Williams, the circuit opened in 1966 and the Australian Touring Car Championship's first visit in 1969 proved momentous with Norm Beechey taking Holden's first ATCC race win. The race, called "The Last Race, The Main Event, Amaroo's Final Fling" started at 4:30pm and was held over 10 laps. Sign up to the Repco Supercars Championship Newsletter, We use cookies to ensure we give you the best experience on our website. plug-in track lighting walmart; buddy johnson highlights Amazing pics guys, thanks for that! The circuit will forever be linked with Craig Lowndes' terrifying rollover during the 1999 event, while its final championship round in 2001 delivered an underdog victory for Paul Morris. Race Meetings - Proofs - Amaroo Park - Autopics http://www.youtube.com/Super100MPHWelcome back to 1986 Amaroo Park for the APPENDIX J Series Race Round 1, 5 laps.Appendix J Touring Cars was an Australian motor racing category for modified, production based sedans. Then tow it back to race at Wanneroo Park. * Amaroo hosted two rounds of the 1989 Australian Drivers' Championship (both held on the same day). A search should bring it up. Wonderful, distant memories. Amaroo Park Raceway was a 1.930km (1.199mi) motor racing circuit located in Annangrove, New South Wales, in the present-day north-western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Drag Racing 1960's . Certainly, both namesakes were very curvy.The car seemed to be even more desirable because it was road registered, and I couldnt help conjuring up images of terrorising the neighbourhood with tyres, supercharger, exhaust and passenger screaming in unison! SUs of course . Dick Ward used to tow his Fiat Abarth (mit Mazda rotary engine) all the way from Perth to Sydney (2000 + miles) just to race there. Originally set out in bushland, the circuit took its name froman Aboriginal world meaning beautiful place. It was the premier form of Touring car racing in Australia from 1960 to 1964.For more Appendix J info see:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_J_Touring_CarsGROUP N is the modern name for the category, which is broken into 3 time periods represented by Na, Nb and Nc:Group Na is for cars commercially available in Australia prior to 31 December 1957.Group Nb is for cars manufactured prior to 31 December 1964 of which 100 have been produced.Group Nc is for cars of a make and model which competed in Australia between 1 January 1965 and 31 December 1972 in either the Australian Touring Car Championship or in other races for Group C Improved Production Touring Cars.Historic Touring Car Association of New South Wales:https://www.htcansw.org.au/GROUP N (Australia) wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_N_Touring_CarsAmaroo Park Raceway info:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaroo_ParkCommentated by: Mike Raymond, Neil Crompton and Garry Wilkinson.All credit to Channel 7 Sport, Australia.http://www.audioblocks.com for music.Motor sport is an international language. Other car events included the Amaroo Park 300 endurance race, contested between 1980 and 1987 (though as a round of the Australian Endurance Series only from 1983), while the circuit also played host to the major single seat and sports sedan categories through to the 1990s. The headline event, a 40 lap race for production bikes, was nearly washed out, when the fine sunshine of qualifying turned to unrelenting rain on race day. Having lived over the valley from Annangrove Rd all my life, you certainly knew when a meet was on miss hearing the v8 sounds roar up the gulley!! GitHub export from English Wikipedia. Once we have received payment, we will e-mail you a jpeg file within 48 hours, which will print a 8x12 inch photo, A. The track hosted its first ATCC race in 1964, back when the championship was decided over a single race, and maintained a regular presence on the calendar through to the turn of the millennium. no I don't think so. The AMSCAR Series had its origins in Amaroo's own Sun-7 Chesterfield Series for touring cars, first held in 1971 and was won by Sydney's Lakis Manticas driving a Morris Cooper S. This would continue, under various names relating to series sponsorship, through to 1981. Fred Gibson's win in Round 3 of the 1983 series was the first win in Australian touring car racing for a turbo powered car, and Nissan's first turbo charged touring car win anywhere in the world. A 10-minute drive to the iconic Penguin Parade, discover the natural wonders of the Nobbies or drop into the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit. [3][4] The ARDC also let Arthur Hayes, their #1 member (meaning he was card holder #1) wave the chequered flag for the race. The last race meeting thus take place on August 23, 1998, with a meeting billed as the 'Goodbye to Amaroo State Open Meeting'. The final driver, Andrew Papadopoulos driving an Alfa Romeo GTV, crossed the line at 4:40pm bringing the curtain down on one of Australia's most popular race circuits after over 31 years of continuous operation. more stories, one day perhaps? An anti-smoking sponsorship deal took Calder off the championship trail for several seasons before returning in 1996. The story of the Sabrina forms part of another I've posted here before Other internationals to race there, Do Jones and the Brabhams count? Along with its abrasive surface, 3-2-3 grid format, and drainage ditches in close proximity to the tarmac it had been built on a Nerang River flood plain, after all the circuit's signature was its first corner. Three decades ago, it was the site of Surfers Paradise International Raceway. Amaroo Park now!!! - TenTenths Motorsport Forum Contact. . Travel eight kilometres inland from the beachside racetrack and you will come across an urban development known called Emerald Lakes. Can you list the top facts and stats about Amaroo Park Raceway? Amaroo Park 1970 31st May 1970 13th September 1970 1980 Calder Catalina Fishermans Bend Geelong Sprints Hepburn Springs Leyburn Sprints Oran Park Phillip Island Rob Roy Templestowe Formula 5000 Formula Vee Formula Ford Speedway Hillclimbs Rally & Rallycross Bikes Drag Racing DVDs Shop by Brand Holden Ford Lotus Morris Elfin Mazda Brabham Lola I had never heard of Laurie Knight, who lived in Benalla, but two of my best friends were his cousins, as coincidence would have it. Banks Skoda Special - Amaroo Park 31th May 1970 - 70-AM31570-064, A. The champion's celebratory burnout tradition was also born at Oran Park when Lowndes sealed his maiden title in 1996 although he had to borrow teammate Peter Brock's car to do it after his own had a mechanical failure during the races. At the fastest part of the circuit, the run up to Bitupave Hill, the faster cars (Sports Sedans, Sports Cars and F5000) were able to reach just over 220km/h (137mph).

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