MOTORSPORT NZ HISTORIC HERITAGE AWARDS
At the recent MotorSport New Zealand Awards Dinner, held in Christchurch on May 22, NZ Classic Driver’s founding editor, Allan Dick, was presented with a Historic Heritage Award. Allan has been writing about cars and motorsport since the 1960s – somewhere in my collectibles box I have a copy of Allan’s first motorsport-related magazine dating back to 1966 – and, of course, he continues to share his knowledge and thoughts in this very magazine. Typically, Allan himself described it as a “geriatric award” but I’m sure that all those who have enjoyed reading his words over the past halfa-century would probably agree that the award was well-deserved. As would, I suspect, many of those within the sport that he’s irritated and offended with his outspoken comments – in his own words, Allan points out: “I have never felt comfortable about fence-sitting and there have been times when I have been dragged behind the bike shed at race meetings and warned to back off.” It’s doubtful as to whether Allan ever followed that advice!
By coincidence, another contributor to this edition of the magazine, Kevin Lancaster – you can read the first part of his feature on South Auckland racer, Barry Phillips, elsewhere within these pages – was also presented with a Historic Heritage Award on the same night.
Kevin has been a member of the Auckland Car Club (ACC) for many years and was one of those responsible for organising the club’s Maramarua rallies back in the early 1970s. Kevin’s keen enthusiasm for motorsport as well as his obvious talent for organisation would be put to good use by Jim Donald and, as part of the Masport Team, they enjoyed considerable success in local rallying – winning the New Zealand Rally Championship in 1980 and 1982 and the Rally of New Zealand in 1981. Shifting more to the organisational side, Kevin was also involved with the 1983 and 1984 Rally of New Zealand as well as serving on the MotorSport New Zealand Rally Commission.
In later years, as a rally and race team media manager, Kevin also added writing to his skillset – and we hope that he will become a more regular contributor to NZ Classic Driver.