Champions Will Be Crowned At Pukekohe Park Raceway This Weekend

Eight new New Zealand champion teams will be crowned at the final round of this year’s NaZCAR Pro Series 3 & 6 Hr. Endurance Race series at Pukekohe’s Pukekohe Park Raceway on Saturday (August 20).

Officially sanctioned by the AASA, the event marks the end of the first three-round Pro Series (after the COVID-19 Lockdown saw last year’s inaugural series reduced to just two rounds) and with another 30+strong field of cars set to face the starter at 11.00am on Saturday morning, the man behind the series, Dr Jacob Simonsen, says that not even the prospect of heavy rain and strong winds on Friday and on race day could wipe the smile off his face this week.

“Seriously,” he said on Thursday,” the final round of our Pro Series is shaping up nicely with most of our regulars returning, a couple of teams coming back after missing the second round at Taupo, plus we’ve got a handful of new teams making their debut so we’ve got an excellent field to say our farewells to the track and venue before it closes its doors for good in April next year.”

Since kicking off his own involvement in motorsport in this country with the first wacky, budget-based ‘LeMons 24 Hour’ event at the Hampton Downs circuit in northern Waikato in 2016, Dr. Simonsen has – with the help of a small but dedicated group of volunteers – created his own self-contained long-distance racing ‘world’ for ordinary, everyday Kiwis to enjoy.

To do so he has cut both the cost of, and (in his own words) ‘a lot of the B/S that has traditionally been associated with going motor racing’ for so long.

The first step in that journey was setting up an alternative event sanctioning and driver licensing body to the incumbent, MotorSport NZ. That body, the Australasian Autosport Alliance (AASA) is a 100% NZ-owned agency of the Australian Auto-Sport Alliance, and has been successfully sanctioning, permitting, and licensing all LeMons, NaZCAR as well as Ultimate Rally Group (Targa NZ) events for the past five years.

The second step was to establish an ‘identity’ for the events he wanted to run here. From that desire came the creation of the distinctive NZ-focused NaZCAR brand plus the new Pro Series, originally described as a ‘no-nonsense multiple distance/time endurance championship ‘without the silly themes/penalties of a typical LeMons-style event.’

Such was the response when he first uploaded details and projected event dates to his NaZCAR website early last year that Dr Simonsen says that even then he realized he was ‘on to something.’ Then when several of his LeMons 24 Hr. regulars told him independently last year that they intended building new cars ‘just for the Pro Series next (this) year he knew that his original idea had been right on the money.’

“I’ve actually been incredibly humbled,” said Dr Simonsen, “by the response we’ve had (to the Pro Series) from competitors, sponsors, and the motorsport industry in general.

“It proves that we’ve come up with the right recipe at the right time and it gives me the confidence to keep developing the championship side of things year on year.”

In terms of the 8 NZ titles (4x 3 Hr. & 4x 6 Hr.) being contested at Pukekohe Park Raceway there isn’t one that you could safely say is a shoo-in

As Dr Simonsen said on Thursday; “Things certainly are going to get interesting on Saturday because the championship titles have been hotly contested at both our previous rounds this year so the points at the top of each class table are all still incredibly close.”

With a round win and a runner-up spot apiece, for instance, the points lead in the 3 Hr. Pro 1 class is shared by the BMW E36 coupe of Garry Cammock and Michael Jane of Team Mag Motorsport and the BMW E36 318ti Compact of Team Super Mates Racing’s Reece Hendl-Cox, Lee Zeltwanger and Cullern Thorby.

After Saturday’s Pro Series final, Dr. Simonsen’s focus will then shift to ‘the biggie,’ the 2022 24 hr LeMons event being run for the first time this year on the full international circuit at Hampton Downs.

With 110 teams and over 600 drivers already registered to contest it, the continuous 24 race on September 16 & 17 is quite possibly going to be the largest participatory motorsport event New Zealand has ever seen!

More information on upcoming NaZCAR events can be found on the 24 hours of NaZCAR page on Facebook at facebook.com/Nazcar24

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