Baskerville 1000

Forget the Bathurst 1000, the motorsport event with a big future, we reckon, is the Baskerville 1000.

This six-hour enduro is the Hobart Sporting Car Club’s new speed event – for $1000 cars, when rst purchased. In many cases, the liveries were worth as much as the vehicles they coloured, with teams encouraged to present their cars in replica or tribute paint schemes of more famous machines.

Thus, a JPS and a M-liveried BMW took part, so too Pieter Jackson- and Monsteravoured Falcons. Need car nance? Perhaps contact F A Credit, which never sponsored Glenn Seton.

Less famous racing vehicles included an Adelaide-built Mitsubishi 380 and a Falcon stationwagon. Never seen examples of those on the track before.

The inaugural Autocraft-sponsored two-day event saw 220 drivers competing in Tasmania’s

rst endurance regularity for many years, with teams covering more than 200 laps each. If this on-track action all sounds like good fun, it was the number of beginner drivers and family-run teams that were the biggest positives for one of the event’s founders Bruce Thomas.

“The Baskerville 1000 is an entry level event designed to attract new competitors to motorsport and at least half of the eld was represented by people new to the sport,” Thomas said.

“Many of the teams were comprised of family members experiencing motorsport for the rst time which was also fantastic.

“The increase in interest has multiple benefactors including CAMS affiliated clubs with new memberships, CAMS as a result of the large number of new licences processed and the motorsport retail sector thanks to the sales of a range of safety and essential items.

“As for the racing itself, the driving standards and vehicle reliability were generally impeccable as no safety cars and no recoveries were required throughout the course of the two days.”

Taking out the rst day was the Phil Morris Motorsport (a tribute to the late Phil Morris of TCM fame) AU Falcon with 755 points.

Meanwhile, the North of Creek Road-driven Ford Falcon AU green-eyed monster lookalike won the second day with 960 points, covering over 500km during the course of the event.

The Hobart Sporting Car Club is gearing up for a diverse offering of motorsport events in 2019 ranging from the Baskerville 1000, Drifting, Time Attack, the Tasmanian Circuit Racing Championship and the blue-ribbon event, Baskerville Historics, which will be held from September 20-22. The HSCC is joint promoter (along with the MG Car Club) for this event which has cemented itself as one of the premier historic events on the Australian motorsport calendar.