Gulf confirms Festival of Motor Racing title sponsorship

Gulf goes back to the future and confirms Festival of Motor Racing title sponsorship

Gulf Oil - one of motorsport’s most famous brands - has announced it will provide title backing to the New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing next year when the event celebrates one of New Zealand – and the brand’s most celebrated drivers – Denny Hulme.

The Denny Hulme themed event will be the fourth New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing and will take place over the two weekends of January 18-20 and 25-27 at the Hampton Downs race circuit.

Gulf’s iconic logo is – quite simply - synonymous with motor sport and the light blue and orange colours of the brand have adorned some of the sport’s most famous racing cars for decades – the Gulf Ford GT40s and the Gulf Le Mans Porsches for example and of course, the discreetly Gulf-branded orange McLaren Can Am cars that will be such a feature of the 2013 Gulf Denny Hulme festival weekends.

In recent years the brand has enjoyed a high profile in motorsport again, gracing Le Mans once more on a variety of Audi and Aston Martin machines.

A new player to the New Zealand lubricant market, Gulf is being distributed in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands by New Zealand farmer owned co-operative CRT. In June 2011, Gulf was launched in Auckland, fittingly enough at Hampton Downs. A series of racing events and road shows were then used to profile the brand – even attracting the attention of other world famous icons such as Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.

Although the product range is new to this country, Gulf is hardly a new name to New Zealand motor racing and has a heritage that goes back to the 1960s. Today, Gulf is proud to support the Bruce McLaren Trust.

The title sponsorship of the event will also include specific naming of the Can Am revival races, of which six will be run over the two weekends of the event to celebrate one of the classes that Denny Hulme – a Gulf-backed driver himself – raced and won in. Hulme was Can-Am champion twice in 1968 and in 1970 and runner up in 1967, 1969 and 1971 while racing for driver and constructor Bruce McLaren.

Many of the big V8-powered Can Am sports cars from the heyday of the championship still run in historic racing events throughout the world and festival organisers hope up to 20 of the Can- Am racers will compete on January 18-20 and January 25-27 for the Denny Hulme Trophy - a unique cup that will be presented by the late 1967 Formula 1 World Champion's wife Greeta Hulme to the winner of the six race championship.

Gulf will have a presence on all competing cars at the event as well as on track signage and will host both of the event’s celebratory BBQ events that take place on each of the Saturdays. Racers and spectators will also be able to check out – and buy – anything from the brands latest range of products. The company will also help promote the Festival in the build-up to the event.

The Can-Am cars will not be the only historic V8 racing cars in action at the Gulf Denny Hulme Festival. The even has played host over the past three years to the world's biggest gathering of Formula 5000 cars and these will race again in the 2013 event as will a big field of Australian, New Zealand and US V8-engined Historic Muscle Cars, Group A cars and Formula Juniors.

ENDS

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