V8s say Creek is the pits for fans
V8s say Creek is the pits for fans
AROUND lunchtime, Australia’s most popular cars - the racers that prompt a party almost every time they hit the bitumen - sped around the Eastern Creek Raceway.
Every few minutes, the vehicles zipped down the straightest part of the course, right through an area with the grandstand on the right and a members’ pavilion on the left.
Just before he sat down for lunch in a tablecloth-and-white-plate clubroom, V8 Supercars CEO Wayne Cattach looked out of the window to the grandstand side.
And he saw something unusual - rows of empty maroon seats.
"This race," he said, "it’s a concern."
It’s an anomaly, really. Most weekends, the V8s can make a case for popularity. Fans scoop up their video game; some 22 million watch annually on television; at several venues, more than 100,000 revellers create colourful mega-parties.
But not at Eastern Creek. In 2007 none of the 13 other races attracted fewer than Eastern Creek’s weekend total of 29,530. (Adelaide’s Clipsal 500 drew almost 10 times that.)
This weekend, the discouraging numbers have continued - a combination, Cattach said, of minimal event promotion, far-flung track location and poor spectator sightlines at the seating areas. The bottom line: even if you drive all the way out to Eastern Creek, you often hear the cars without seeing them.
"This track," Cattach said, "it was built for drivers, not for fans, and the modern race tracks are built now for fans, not drivers. Not that the two should be mutually exclusive. But this place has never been popular."
Although there are no immediate plans to move the race both Cattach and Shane Howard, V8’s general manager of events, spoke at length to The Sunday Telegraph about their long-held hopes to secure a street race far closer to the city, in the Sydney Olympic Park area.
Such a location, Cattach believes, could elevate the Sydney race from a forgotten weekend that attracts only die-hards into a must-see event.
"Right now, this is a motor race," Cattach said, "not a party."
But the Supercars series has found opposition to this party. For almost four years, V8 officials have spoken with representatives from the Sydney Olympic Park Authority about the infrastructure necessary to convert the roads into a racetrack. Cattach has always emphasised the economic benefits for the area; the local chamber of commerce, he said, supports the idea of the event.
After years of V8 proposals, though, SOPA does not. Where Cattach sees the reasons this should work (a nearby train station, good parking, a shortened distance from the CBD), those from the Olympic Park, Cattach said, see something that doesn’t match their ideals.
"They think it’s inappropriate with the Olympic legacy to have cars running around," Howard said. "But that area, it’s become a white elephant. (There is) nothing going on there. But they said it was inappropriate with the overall business plan for the area. That’s a load of bull. Because we run a street car race in Surfers Paradise on a major highway north and south, and in the heart of the CBD on the Gold Coast, and businesses are working around that."
Cattach is bothered by the fact that Australia’s largest market lacks a race to equal that profile.
He wants, he said, "to embrace the whole city". He wants the Fords and Holdens to cut their tight turns and an entire metropolis to know about it.
Unlike many V8 races, promoted by motor sport boards or event management companies, the Eastern Creek race is promoted by the Australian Racing Drivers Club.
Though Cattach stopped short of criticising the hosts, he said, purposefully, that the "standard of the promoter is a big part of having a successful race".
For now, he and other V8 officials are stuck with a Sydney event that, even before the race started, provided the ennui of a small-town carnival about to skip town.
Source: foxsports.com.au