Mighty Quinn sets sights on Manfeild’s NZ Grand Prix

Quinn could soon be linked to the NZ Grand Prix, which our Manfeild circuit has hung on to since 2008, but is nailed down only until next year

Tony Quinn comes across as one of those hard-nosed businessmenracing car types who is amusing if you’re not in his firing line.

This is the same Tony Quinn who owns Highlands Motorsport Park at Cromwell and now Hampton Downs south of Auckland.

With Quinn, money talks. His autobiography has just hit the shelves, Zero to 60, and I couldn’t put it down.

He went from being a tough wee Scottie immigrant to New Zealand and Australia to owning a massive pet food empire.

There are Manawatu links. One is the Targa NZ rally, which he has won five times.

When I once asked him why he diverted into motorsport, he gave me this hard-case quote when he rocked up to The Square in the 2011 Targa in his souped-up Nissan peter.lampp@fairfaxmedia.co.nz

GT-R35. ‘‘I don’t smoke, don’t drink and I’ve only got one wife,’’ he said.

At the time, aged 54, he owned eight pet food factories in Australia. Since then he has sold his VIP Petfoods business in Australia for $427 million and since 2011 has owned the Australian GT series, which he brings to New Zealand each year.

Quinn could soon be linked to the NZ Grand Prix, which our Manfeild circuit has hung on to since 2008, but is nailed down only until next year.

On page 318 of his book, he writes he wants to stage the grand prix on his circuits in alternate years because, he says, most people outside motorsport don’t even know there is such a thing.

‘‘We should treat it with more respect,’’ he writes. ‘‘There used to be quite a lot of hoopla about it, but it has lost its shine and lustre.

‘‘It would take at least a million bucks to make something out of it, but I can probably afford that.’’

If you were a motorsport official you would tread on eggshells when Quinn was around. It’s his way or the motorway.

One year in Perth, he was fined A$3000 for briefly going sideways in his race car on the track. So Quinn cobbled together the money, in coins, almost 100 kilograms of it, put it into a sagging pit-lane buggy and tipped the lot on the sport’s office floor.

Just before the first race at Highlands, officials had his staff sweeping kitty litter away from one of the track corners. Quinn flew up in his car and threw the three officials off the circuit.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, he has been able to make money from motorsport and might have been a welcome suitor for Manfeild.

He offered to buy the Taupo circuit for $3.65m when it went insolvent, burdened by the millions spent on it for the AIGP series upgrade. The shareholders voted against, feeling the circuit would be firstly a tourist attraction and it would affect their car club racing. Quinn walked away and Taupo is still unsold.

Last year, he bought Hampton Downs instead for $13.5m, erased its debt and is spending $25m on it.

He has the wherewithal to rejuvenate New Zealand motorsport, which is still recovering from the V8 Supertourers breakaway schism, which fell over last year, and all the expensive legal jousting that went with it.

Turbos sawn off again

Rugby referee Brett Johnson’s snafu, which cost the Manawatu Turbos a bonus point on Saturday, was one of the worst miscarriages in their 11-year history.

Many times they have been sawn off. Speaking out cost last year’s coach Jason O’halloran $2000 (with $2000 more suspended) and it has changed nothing.

With time up on Saturday, Turbos skipper Callum Gibbins reached out and planted the ball against the post-ground for a try. But Johnson, whose sight was blocked by bodies, called a knockon out of his backside, when he could easily have gone to the video ref. Instead he marched off and shook hands with the touch judge.

It was utterly outrageous, among a litany of cock-ups. As ever, the Turbos just have to lump it; there’s no comeback. After the game at New Plymouth, the inept Johnson made himself scarce.

Club refs in Manawatu would have done a better job.

It was like the Ranfurly Shield challenge at Hamilton all over again.

Among Johnson’s sins: Penalising Gibbins for not rolling away when deliberately held down by a Taranaki lock; penalising Heiden Bedwell-curtis for not releasing when he stripped a ball from a player yet to hit the ground (try to Taranaki off the resultant lineout); allowing play to continue after an accidental offside by Taranaki and later a Taranaki flanker entering offside; allowing a Taranaki forward to be on the wrong side of an attacking Manawatu lineout maul.

Manawatu did make their share of handling and lineout errors and their kicking wasn’t flash, but they would still have been in with a chance had Johnson not stuffed up so often.