WHY HIGHLANDS?: By now, it’s probably pretty well understood that Highlands Motorsport Park near Cromwell is not going to be just another motor racing circuit on the Ruapuna, Levels, Teretonga loop. While there will be motor racing meetings, these will be restricted under the terms of the resource consent and those meetings will not necessarily be an addition to the usual New Zealand championship rounds.
There is no guarantee that rounds of either of the V8 series, Formula Ford, TRS or anything else will be staged here. Tony Quinn wants to make sure that the days when Highlands can hold race meetings will be “spent” on the most productive kind of racing possible. He is wanting to host landmark meetings here, which will probably mean importing fields and running outside the usual MSNZ Tier One and Tier Two categories.
The mainstay of the circuit operation will be run on a country club basis where there are “members” who can use the circuit for unleashing the performance of their cars under safe, control circumstances and away from the public and public roads.
These “members” will have 200 days access annually to the circuit and they can either leave their cars in the security of the 48 (initially) garages in Gasoline Alley, or they can arrive and drive.
And the car you see in the photograph here is precisely why Highlands will be filling a much-needed role.
In the past decade and a half, a growing number of New Zealanders have enjoyed considerable wealth and they have spent some of that money on high performance cars.
We have a very high proportion of exotic cars here. Throughout the nineties and the early part of this new century, we had the highest number of new Ferraris per head of population in the world.
Today Ferraris, Maseratis, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins, Porsches, Audi R8s etc if not exactly common, are to be seen on a daily basis.
Then there are the people with classic and historic motorsport cars who would like to give their vehicles a run, but don’t want to risk them in actual competition.
Highlands is the high speed driving safety valve.
This weekend, Damien O’Carroll and I went from Oamaru to Highlands via the Lindis Pass and back to Oamaru via the Pig Root — a sensational loop road, equal to any in the world.
Traffic was light and it was a pleasant enough experience that could have been awesome. The problem was that we just couldn’t unleash the breathtaking performance of this thunderous German war-machine that sounds like a Wagnerian opera on wheels.
Costing 266,000 big ones, the BMW M6 offers incredible performance with 0-100km/h times in the 4.9 second bracket, a task accompanied by the constant flashing of the yellow traction and stability control yellow light!
I was impressed by the 11.2L/100km fuel economy we achieved there and back — but this was not the AA Energywise Economy Run! We were in a tarmac burning, high speed, German blitzkrieg machine capable of stripping hotmix off roads. To be tootling along on idle with the speedo needle sitting on 100km/h is a sad, pathetic joke for this car.
Occasionally, we would run the risk of losing license, emptying the bank account and leaving the car locked at the side of the road, with a short mind-bending, ear-splitting, power blast past a slower car that only left you wanting more, more, more!
When I lived in Auckland I used to see the red tide forming outside the CCS Ferrari showroom a couple of times a year — Fazzer owners were off on a club run. But a club run on public roads in cars that would be so under-performing that they’d be in danger of “oiling up plugs”, or whatever today’s modern, high performance car does.
A Ferrari Club Run is an oxymoron — you can do that sort of thing in a Morris Minor.
But, outside classic race meetings and the occasional track day where you have to share facilities with all and sundry, these mild-mannered club runs are all that’s available — and perhaps club dinners where you can dream wistfully about being able to really drive the pants off your car.
Yesterday, I looked over the BMW M6. I trembled at the intimating thump of its engine on idle, I looked at the enormous ventilated discs clearly visible through the big, open-spoked mag wheels and you could tell this car was wasted on what we were using it for.
Apart from the occasional high-speed blat past slower traffic, we could have done the trip in my Daihatsu Charade at around half the cost in petrol and adding maybe 10 minutes to the time taken.
So, why Highlands? That’s why!
