Wally’s Words

Which way does the track go – and what’s the lap record?

Idid hear that saying once or twice over the journey! One instance that springs to mind was back in 2000. We’d completed the Oran Park weekend and had a ride day scheduled for the Tuesday at Wakefield Park, near Goulburn. Now, I’d been there before (can’t remember why – but it was for a high-performance day of some description) so I’d done quite a few laps around the joint.

I love the Wakefield track – particularly from a teaching/training point of view. It has some lovely corner combinations and the loop at the top of the hill makes you think about single or double apex approaches and the like, plus it’s forgiving in the case of someone running out of talent!

We arrived down from Sydney early afternoon on the Monday in a couple of Avis’ finest Holden Commodore Executive sedans – complete with Ecotec V6 and auto slush-box. Mark Skaife uttered the track direction/lap record question so, we set out for a lap or two of ‘orientation.’ I was driving the other Commode and followed ‘His Legend-ship’ onto the circuit.

All went fine until we arrived at the left-hander after the loop – which tightens considerably on itself – when I saw the Skaife-piloted Holden gracefully loop off the track and slide to stop in the infield. I did say the track was forgiving! On my inquiring as to his wellbeing MS replied: “tricky corner, that!”

Back onto the circuit we went and onto lap two and – same corner, same car, same driver and same result!

“I’ve seen enough!” said the maestro. “Let’s go and have a beer.” And we did – and that night watched Cathy Freeman win 400 metres gold at the Sydney Olympics.

In remembering that day, it got me thinking about the circuits we travelled to, the uniqueness of each and memories surrounding some of them. Of course, some of them are gone to God, and there might be one or two that you wished did exactly that! Lakeside remains, and while it’s not up to spec for today’s Supercars, it’s a track that requires large ‘cojones’ to drive it to the max. Mine certainly aren’t large enough!

Its setting was unique, too, which was obvious when we arrived for the championship round there in 1996. “Sorry, no racing this weekend – come back next weekend.” A storm dumped buckets in and around Bris-Vegas, and Lakeside – being a water catchment – was under a couple of metres

of water! We did race the next weekend without a problem, though.

Getting into the Lakeside facility was always an issue as there was only one road in – and a very narrow road at that – and when the Supercars came to town it was a full-house. To the point where the serious punters would camp alongside the access road on the Saturday night in order to get their favourite spots the next day, effectively blocking the road in some places.

We’d arrive early on Sunday morning and nd our access blocked by the lads, most of whom had a very big Saturday night (or had got off to an early start) and after polite requests to please move, we were very impolitely told to go forth and multiply! After loudly and forcefully explaining that a certain Peter Brock was on board and they were unlikely to see much racing if the Legend and the other touring car heroes couldn’t get into the joint, it was like Moses and the parting of the waters as the cars (and bodies) were moved and his Brockness sailed serenely by with a royal wave and a ‘thanks lads!.’

Getting to the track had its moments, too. In ’94 and ’95 the Holden Racing Team’s primary sponsor was Telecom Mobile-Net (now Telstra, of course) so blue was the team colour – not the red that became prominent couple of years later. Pants were navy blue and team shirts were a light blue colour and with all our sponsor logos on the sleeves and shirt pockets we could be mistaken for… well something or someone else.

We were heading up the highway out of Brisbane one morning to the circuit driving very plain Holden Commodores when a car-load of ‘lads’ came storming up the outside lane – obviously on their way to Lakeside. As they drew alongside the front passenger glanced across, saw a Commodore, light blue shirts with badges and in a panic, informed his driver ‘COPS!’ The tyres smoked as the hero slammed on the brakes and, had we been real boys-in-blue, that alone would have got them booked.

In a similar occurrence, the overtaking car of petrol heads realised it was the Brock-Meister himself in the car next to them, and spent the next few kilometres trying to pass items across for the great man to sign. All at 100 kays, I might add. No highlights like that when we moved to Queensland Raceway! More on that later.

Oran Park sadly is just a housing estate these days but it was one of the great circuits – both for the punter and for the driver, but especially the driver! Watching the best steerers in the country powering their way over the back of the circuit and a crowd heaving with emotion (and red ags and blue ags and beer) was something special.

I remember my rst visit there, out of the stands and into the media centre. It was early on a Saturday morning and I was taking in the view from the top of the tower when an older bloke with dirty boots, overalls and the look of a maintenance man joined me and we got chatting. After a while I asked him what was his connection with Oran Park and he pointed north and said ‘as far as you can see that way is mine and pretty much most of it to the east and west too.’

That was my rst meeting with the very downto-earth Tony Perich, whose family business is listed in the Top 20s by Forbes in its Top 50 listings. First impressions couldn’t be more wrong as the Perich-owned Oran Park from the early 1980s until its nal race in 2010, and it gave us senior motor sport lovers some great memories to look back on… if only my memory worked! What was that about something called YouTube?

Calder Park is a place that needs to be turned into a housing estate as it just sits there ‘decomposing’ but it still reminds me of weekends wobbling up the highway from Albury (a six-toeight can trip) to watch the likes of Jane, Moffat, Beechey and a very young Brock tear up the little track. It was also the circuit where I took my very

rst high-performance driving lessons with Jim Murcott’s Driving Centre in the 1970s.

In my mid-20s and after doing level one and two defensive courses I was convinced of my own looming ‘legend-ness’ until my instructor – that very talented steerer of Ford Escorts, Rod Stevens (who sadly passed away last December) – took me under his wing. Rod jumped in the passenger seat and told me to do a ying lap and timed it. At the end of what I thought was the greatest lap of Calder ever, Rod took over the driver’s seat of my bog-standard Mazda 626 and proceeded to record a lap time nine seconds quicker than me – on the short circuit!

Rod then suggested that I stop wasting his and everybody else’s valuable time and piss off home if I didn’t start to pick up the pace very quickly. Ego suitably crushed, I opened my ears and shut my mouth and by the end of the day had found nearly all of that nine seconds. But learned a bigger life lesson that day in that if someone knew more about something than you, then shut the f..k up and listen to them!

I said earlier that I’d come back to Queensland Raceway. Physically that isn’t likely thankfully but I still get frustrated today about that track and the fact they promised the world and delivered an atlas! I notice it’s in the news too as to whether or not owner John Tetley will sell to Tony Quinn. It needs something to happen as Supercars in particular don’t seem all that keen to return there – outside of Covid, of course.

Following the IndyCar support races on the Gold Coast in I think 1998, we had to stay over in SEQ for a day or two so Skaifey suggested we head out to the site of the new Willowbank track to see what we could learn. There was a site foreman bloke there and he showed us the plans with Skaifey quickly asking for rise and fall dimensions, track camber etc to x in his mind what to expect. The guys showed us the yellow tape strung out so we could visualise better the new circuit and it wasn’t hard to work out that a) it was the shape of a paper clip and b) it was as at as a shite carter’s hat!

Now I’m no rocket surgeon but even my poor little mind was asking the question that if you were on a re-claimed coal mine and you had an absolute blank canvas to work with as far as an almost endless area of open ground and probable access to some of the biggest earth moving machines in the Southern Hemisphere, why in the world build a paper clip-shaped track on at ground?

Earth ll could have been moved around to create rises and falls and the planners could have added replicas of some of the best corners from around international motorsport. Imagine Laguna Seca’s cork-screw, Spa’s Eau Rouge or any corner from Bathurst or Phillip Island, creating spectator hideaways for fans at their favourite spots.

It’s not often you get a free hit to create something special but Queensland Raceway never really got to step up to the plate! Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but, it gets bloody hot in Queensland – the builders, however, decided in their wisdom not to plant a single tree in the joint so at the rst Supercars round there, people were dropping like ies!

And re ecting the ‘Greed is Good’ mentality of the time, motor racing fans were told before that rst round there that they couldn’t ‘bring their own’ anything! Had to buy everything from the venue! Maybe OK on the grog side of things but BYO tucker, water and soft drink banned? Family friendly? NOT! After a mini-riot, that was quickly rescinded.

And the pit set-up was the PITS! Awnings-only covering pit lane – no sides or back to defend you from the weather. That’s how it’s done in NASCAR, we were told. Pit lane wasn’t your pit garage; those facilities were behind pit lane in corrugated iron sheds. That’s how it’s done in NASCAR, we were told. Before each on-track session the crew had to cart everything they needed out to pit lane, then after the session take it all back again.

Between each team’s garage bay was a wall that went halfway to the ceiling so if one of your guys broke wind, someone in the next garage across apologised for you. I suppose that’s how they did that in NASCAR too!

It just made everything that little bit harder for everyone to do their job, and a damn sight less enjoyable for the race fans as well. So, I’m not surprised it’s not a rst-option for the Supercars’ hierarchy as a go-to circuit these days.

I actually was told by a driver sometime later that when HRT was at its peak, key personnel from an opposition team climbed over that halfwall in the middle of the night to try and nd out the secrets of the red rockets; I mean you had actually NO security!

So good luck to whoever ends up owning Qld Raceway for the long term because you would have to spend bucket loads of dollars to make a silk purse out of that sow’s ear!