SO CLOSE, YET SO FAR

As I write this column, we have just got back from the wharf, collecting the trailers after their trip to New Zealand. It’s been over three months since we had to cancel the Masterton event. If you are a follower of this column, in the last last issue, I outlined the time frame we had between the Meremere event and the proposed Masterton event. Obviously, like so many others, we were gutted that we couldn’t get to Masterton. The time, effort, and financial implications it had on so many people were just huge. And it didn’t stop when the decision to cancel was forced on us. We had personally returned to Sydney for testing, so the trailers and the cars were sitting in New Plymouth ready to travel to Masterton on our return. The plan was to race in Masterton, ship a container (with two cars in it) out of Wellington. We would then tidy, clean, and sort the other seven cars and two trailers out after the race and drive them back to Auckland. At this stage, they would board the roll-on-roll-off boat — basically, a boat of big trucks, machinery, and cars that you can drive the machinery on and off — a week later to get back to Australia. We now had to change all these plans to get the cars home.

Now, problem one was the nitro for the Masterton race; all that fuel was up the front of one of the trailers. And you can’t ship that amount of dangerous goods on a roll-on-roll-off boat. So, we had to take all of the nitro out of the trailer, which included unloading some of the cars. Problem two was, while the trailers were in storage, a big dust storm came through and filled every tiny little nook and cranny with dust. It’s a pretty tight trailer, but, man, it went everywhere. Problem three was that I had organized Ryan Sheldon to tow the wheelstander down from Auckland to Masterton, and Mike Preston had the ‘Dark Horse’ in his trailer in New Plymouth to tow to Masterton. This was done to save money on hiring a container for a month, and now both these cars needed to be in the same place to load into the container. Problem four was that I had to find a place to drop a container to load these cars into.

And the worst part of it all — the whole crew were stuck here in Australia, not able to get back to make all this happen! I would hate to count the hours and hours I spent on the phone trying to manage everything from here [Australia]. Now, I don’t want to turn this in to a big, soppy thank you, but we couldn’t have done it without some awesome people on the ground in New Zealand. One of the keys to the whole New Zealand tour was Noel Smith. Noel has been an absolute legend by taking care of all the logistics of getting trucks and trailers around the country and back and forth to the wharf, etc. This guy has an absolute passion for funny cars, trucks, and nitro, so it was a perfect fit. Noel put in countless hours and money helping to organize things for us. Once again, Jeff, Adam, and the Pirtek Taranaki boys helped us out unloading the nitro and cleaning out the dust from the storm. Having been involved with the series since I started, it was great having Jeff and Adam, who knew that cars and the trailers well, so it made being stuck here in Sydney that little bit easier. While those three boys sorted out our trailers and got them back to Auckland, Ryan Sheldon had organized, thanks to John Neilan, the yard at Digga NZ for us to drop the container off at, so we could load the remaining two cars. It’s always nerve-wracking loading cars for shipping overseas, but when you can’t even be there to help, let me tell you, it makes it so much worse. The only thing keeping me calm was the trust that I had in all the guys, as, over the years, we had all loaded many cars together. I can’t thank these guys enough for helping sort everything out on New Zealand soil while we were stuck here.

We managed to get the container picked up instantly and on the way back, however the trailers were a different story, as boats were delayed, and, once New Zealand went into lockdown, we couldn’t get the paperwork processed to get the trailers home on the originally scheduled boat. Thankfully, after a few weeks of trying, we managed to get the trailers on the water and headed back to Sydney.

We had so many challenges thrown at us for the 2020 New Zealand tour: rain at Meremere, Covid-19 for Masterton. I think we managed to put on enough of a show at Meremere to keep the public happy; I just felt for all the fans who were waiting for the Masterton event who still didn’t get to see the Aeroflow show. Hopefully, we can get enough interest to come back again one day. For us, the event’s future is very unknown. It could be months before we can get back on track, let alone actually put on a big event with fans. Let’s just hope we can do it soon, because, boy, do we miss racing already!