Just A Mix Of Pics - Ray Green Collection

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Terrapin at Shelsey Walsh 1967

John Watson in the Brabham Alfa at the British GP 1977. Even in those days, the wire fencing was a real pain, but I doubt I'd ever get anywhere near a hospitality suite these days! At that time, I had recently finished retraining and had only been back on a regular income for a month, so I only took a few pics. Times were very tough with a mortgage to pay...

Donington July 1980.

Ardmore 1989 - by a process of elimination and film matching!

Diane Sharp (then a local in Hamilton) with her Ford V6 engine Marcos, that started life as a V4. This car was eventually sold at auction, but the owner died not too long afterwards. I have been in touch with his widow, but not recently. A little reclusive...

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[Roger Dowding]

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Terrapin at Shelsey Walsh 1967
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John Watson in the Brabham Alfa at the British GP 1977. Even in those days, the wire fencing was a real pain, but I doubt I'd ever get anywhere near a hospitality suite these days! At that time, I had recently finished retraining and had only been back on a regular income for a month, so I only took a few pics. Times were very tough with a mortgage to pay...
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Donington July 1980.
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Ardmore 1989 - by a process of elimination and film matching!
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Diane Sharp (then a local in Hamilton) with her Ford V6 engine Marcos, that started life as a V4. This car was eventually sold at auction, but the owner died not too long afterwards. I have been in touch with his widow, but not recently. A little reclusive...
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Ray, is that a Hawke beside the Marcos, looks like the right body ..

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Can't find the race programme Roger!

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Porsches...

A little out of focus, but this may have been about the time the Lighting Direct colour scheme hit the track.

Wollaton Park Nottingham, year as yet unknown.

Clive Taylor at the as yet undated MG Hillclimb about 1990/91?

Anyone know the name of this special? Date not known either, nor location.

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Some say he was the model for the Rover Viking logo... (Frank Lockhart - far left)

Would this number plate be allowed in NZ? Sister car to the well known 'BUMBLE', that our own John Hudson of BMW fame has been known to have worked on in recent times. Cadwell Park probably 1980.

Was this car eventually finished? Taken at the Henderson indoor motor show 1983. Rover V8 power.

Not sure of the year, but possibly a TACCOC practice day.

Whenuapai, but date still to be established.

Croft 1977 - as far as I can tell...

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Croft again and another E Type Jaguar.

Ardmore January 1989 and I doubt any local will need any extra naming, but for overseas viewers, the Northland Special (Jaguar powered).

Mike John's Vauxhall

Mike John's Jaguar, 4 weeks later 1994.

Now I am assuming this is the same Brabham as the previous earlier post, but either way, I don't yet have a date. Pukekohe this time. It looks to have had an addition to the roll bar, so this might well be a later pic?

Riverhead Forest with a bit of stage marshalling, possibly October 1990.

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[stubuchanan]

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Whenuapai, but date still to be established.
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Are you sure this is Whenuapai? Whenuapai, like Ohakea, was built in the 1930's and the runways of both were composed of large hexagonal concrete slabs - see endpapers of Graeme Vercoe's "Historic Racing Cars of New Zealand". By the 1980's and 1990s they were getting quite rough, as in attached 1997 photo. The Brabham is sitting on rather smoother concrete with no diagonal joints - another venue, maybe .

[Kwaussie]

Ask Jac-Mac? !!

quote "Would this number plate be allowed in NZ? Sister car to the well known 'BUMBLE', that our own John Hudson of BMW fame has been known to have worked on in recent times. Cadwell Park probably 1980.

[Oldfart]

Stu, both were operational fields and still are. Whenuapai was the international airport til 1964 or so. I have participated in events on both and the hex blocks are evident in some places, but there are very large well surfaced areas.Yes there are in both areas where the hex slabs are pretty bad, but far from all over in my opinion.

[Jac Mac]

Ask Jac-Mac? !!

quote "Would this number plate be allowed in NZ? Sister car to the well known 'BUMBLE', that our own John Hudson of BMW fame has been known to have worked on in recent times. Cadwell Park probably 1980.

[color="#0000CD"]In that case why not, there is no attached mention of skin colour or race. Having said that Im sure there is a PC addict ferreted away somewhere in NZ who would make it their purpose in life to have it banned.[/color]

[Ross Hollings]

Re Whenuapai,I was in the RNZAF and based at Whenuapai and worked in the hangers,several areas were upgraded overtime to flasher concrete.

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It's a given that it wasn't Pukekohe, therefore had to be Whenuapai anyway! There were many different surfaces at Whenuapai both on and off the areas used as a race track. Some parts were incredibly rough, some billiard table smooth. Other pics I have put on here probably show that too.

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Silverstone 1977 (also patches of old runways!) with the famous 'Monzanapolis Jaguar'.

Donington Museum - as if you needed that info. Hesketh

Shadow Matra

Definitely Whenuapai....

Definitely Pukekohe. Both the NZ based 3 Litre Marcos Volvos. They only made about 198 with that engine and few were raced in period (or since!) as the power to weight ratio is so much better with the earlier 2 litre Volvo engine and the plywood chassis, so the 3 litre was never homologated for racing.

This was 1991 and I had not long owned mine, but the black car, then owned by Dave Walker and the yellow car, were both raced fairly often at TACCOC meetings.

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Silverstone 1977

Looks like March 1983 Pukekohe

Dave Walker's Marcos - definitely Whenuapai! I'm assuming that as the car has no race numbers, this must have been practice day on the Saturday?

John Stonard's Piranha at Curborough around 1980

"You put your left leg in, your left leg out..." Again, shows the concrete at Whenuapai - not to mention John Holmes and the Lotus 18 before it reverted to the 15" wheels.

Date to be confirmed, but one of the clues is the Pinepac sticker... It is the little things like this that can make logging/filing slides a little easier. So far, 1100 slides logged, (many with incomplete information) which doesn't sound much when you consider that with digital, you can end up with that many usable images after 1 day's shooting at virtually zero cost - other than shortening the shutter life of the camera.

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[Ross Hollings]

Funny how things come back to you,remember racing there and the concrete was fairly new,you all had to bring a drip tray ,the RNZAF wanted to keep their surface nice,English cars required a bigger tray of course..........just joking.!

[stubuchanan]

Funny how things come back to you,remember racing there and the concrete was fairly new,you all had to bring a drip tray ,the RNZAF wanted to keep their surface nice,English cars required a bigger tray of course..........just joking.!

It's all changed now. Here's a Google aerial from a year or so ago.


The NW to SE cross-runway has mostly disappeared, although the hexagonal pattern is still visible in the bits that remain, and the other runways were upgraded. This was all done a few years ago with considerable rock-breaking noise for us locals. At the Whenuapai meetings I went to in the 1990's, the pit/paddock was situated on the end of the cross runway and a taxiway which has since vanished. These bits were part of the circuit in 1984 and pits were then probably where the John Holmes picture shows. (Grey cell malfunction obviously - but I do recall the loop at the very top left of the picture being used for club meetings in the good old days of Base Commander Barclay).

Stu

[Milan Fistonic]

From the programmes I have there were at least three variations of the Whenuapai track.

1984

1985

1995

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Thanks Milan. I think that there may even have been additional configurations, but at the Wheels only meetings, there may have been maps issued to competitors, but the programme/entry list was just a single sheet of paper. I do remember that at least one of them, I was disappointed that a certain complex had been changed that didn't suit my car at all!

Certain parts of the track were quite rough and the cars bounced around quite a lot. Marshalling at the chicane, (point 1 on the 1995 map), was the busiest day of the year, as we were forever having to replace the cones. I then competed from 1992 until Jim moved on (apart from 1994 when my car was under restoration), but many will remember that the final meeting had to be abandoned, at the 11th hour, as the Aussie Premier, Howard, wanted to fly into Whenuapai rather than Mangere.

The fact that Mangere was acceptable to Queen Elizabeth, just a couple of weeks before, did not go unnoticed. TACCOC did a fantastic job with those events and we'll always be grateful for Jim Barclay's part in those meetings and the guys at Pinepac.

Even with estimated 30,000+ crowds on Wings and Wheels days, traffic management was excellent and there are many of us who wrote to ex-mayor Bob Harvey, stating that if no longer required by RNZAF, the venue would have been a perfect full time motorsports venue. I believe there are still people campaigning on that score.

It should be noted however that the big draw for crowds were the Wings, not the Wheels...

[Oldfart]

84 and 85 had a combination of Wings and Wheels when we ran landyachts as a demonstration at lunchtime. Wings, yes because 3 of us had wing masts similar to what was running on Americas Cup a couple of years back. It wasn't successful for us as there was very little breeze.

[stubuchanan]

Thanks Milan. I think that there may even have been additional configurations, but at the Wheels only meetings, there may have been maps issued to competitors, but the programme/entry list was just a single sheet of paper. I do remember that at least one of them, I was disappointed that a certain complex had been changed that didn't suit my car at all!

Certain parts of the track were quite rough and the cars bounced around quite a lot. Marshalling at the chicane, (point 1 on the 1995 map), was the busiest day of the year, as we were forever having to replace the cones. I then competed from 1992 until Jim moved on (apart from 1994 when my car was under restoration), but many will remember that the final meeting had to be abandoned, at the 11th hour, as the Aussie Premier, Howard, wanted to fly into Whenuapai rather than Mangere.

The fact that Mangere was acceptable to Queen Elizabeth, just a couple of weeks before, did not go unnoticed. TACCOC did a fantastic job with those events and we'll always be grateful for Jim Barclay's part in those meetings and the guys at Pinepac.

Even with estimated 30,000+ crowds on Wings and Wheels days, traffic management was excellent and there are many of us who wrote to ex-mayor Bob Harvey, stating that if no longer required by RNZAF, the venue would have been a perfect full time motorsports venue. I believe there are still people campaigning on that score.

It should be noted however that the big draw for crowds were the Wings, not the Wheels...

There was at least one other shorter version of the circuit, with the Western corner about 200 metres short of the runway end, using the same taxiway as in 1984. This was used, at least, for a late 1990's joint club meeting of the Classic Motorcycle Register and (maybe) the HRSCC - and possibly other times. I just noticed the cars on my way past, and drove in for a look-see. No camera unfortunately.

Re Orange cones, there were always orange motorway-style barriers around the Pinepac sawmill next to the RNZAF -
about 2-3 foot high and a few feet long - they got used on race days.

Stu

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They certainly did Stu! However, I wasn't too impressed when an errant Datsun Z lost it in front of me and there was precious little run off between the outside track edge and those barriers - but bags of grass behind! I never could understand the logic of that placement. Fortunately, I stopped without damage.

From memory, wasn't the track run anti clockwise one year?

I too remember a clubbie practice day there, so maybe my photograph of the numberless Marcos could have been one of those rather than a proper race meeting? We are so lucky with today's digital photography...

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Geoff Byman had a company in that hotbed of British engineering - Grimsby. This is probably Mallory Park and not Cadwell Park, as I first posted, as I do have a slide with the car running that same number.

That isn't Geoff lubricating his innards with a pint of the local brew. This is Geoff's later race car as opposed to his rally and sprint car. His speciality was cylinder heads and he did some quite advanced work regarding inclined inlets. His crew also did a sterling job patching up my car in 1971, at Silverstone, after I'd piled into the wall at Woodcote, having hit a patch of damp when turning in. So ended my first season of competition - a Mini Cooper with a very bent left front.

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