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Early bird tickets available for just two more weeks
Early bird tickets are still available, but only until the end of October, for the two biggest weekends in historic motorsport in New Zealand.
When the green lights prompt the first cars onto track for the 2012 New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing at Hampton Downs on January 20-22 and 27-29 the glories of the country’s motorsport past will be celebrated and re-visited in style with the theme of the festival in 2012 one of the world’s most revered racing brands – BMW.
Visitors to the festival can expect to see cars spanning decades of worldwide motor racing history take to the challenging Hampton Downs circuit, including many machines that featured heavily in the formative years of the sport in New Zealand. Aside from the machines, the event attracts plenty of names from the past and present of motor racing, offering a rare chance to see world-famous names driving a wide range of cars.
As is the case each year with the Festival it is the cars, and sometimes the drivers as well, that are the stars and once again there will be some legendary names from BMW motorsport and New Zealand motorsport in attendance. Kiwi legend Chris Amon will be on hand once again, this time to mark his own inexorable links to the German brand, while touring car legend Jim Richards is down to race, as are other notable BMW racers of the time. Additionally, drivers from the UK, USA, Canada, Monaco and Australia will again make the trip with their fabulous Formula 5000 machinery as they attempt to beat seventy-something Kiwi racing icon Kenny Smith.
Expect to see a number of former BMW Motorsport drivers at the Festival. These drivers drove in the Nissan Mobil 500 at Wellington and Pukekohe in the 1980s & 1990s. Many also featured in the Benson & Hedges series and ANZ Touring car series in the 1980s, and the NZ Touring Car series of the 1980s and 1990s. Names so far include - Rodger Anderson, Paul Fahey, Steve Millen, Neville Crichton, Wayne Wilkinson, Kent Baigent, Neil Lowe, Graeme Crosby, Jim Richards, Tony Lawrence, Phil Myhre (Brunei), Jim Keogh (Australia), Ludwig Finauer (Australia), Ed Lamont, Graeme Cameron, Paul Radisich, John Sax, Brett Riley, Craig Baird, Keith Sharp and Bernie Gillon.
Static BMW displays will also be a major feature of the event – with the legendary BMW CSL ‘Batmobile’ taking the centre stage. As far as rare and valuable cars go, there are few to match this particular beast, an ex-works car once piloted by the likes of Amon and Hans Stuck and still owned by the BMW factory itself. Pretty much priceless, it is just one of dozens and dozens of incredibly valuable machinery that members of the public will be able to get up close and personal with – a key cultural aspect of the festival in a day and age when public accessibility to drivers and cars is usually blocked by a fence and one of the significant reasons why the public have flocked to the event in the first two years.
BMW NZ will also bring from the BMW Museum in Germany a race version of the very rare BMW M1 ‘ProCar’. This car was raced by Prince Leopold von Bayern in the late 1970s. The Prince will demonstrate the M1 at the second weekend of the Festival.
Advisory: if you would like to be removed from the mailing list for the 2011 New Zealand Festival of Motor Racing or you have a change of email address or colleagues you wish to receive the press releases, please advise richard@nzfmr.co.nz You can also liaise with Richard in regard to your accreditation for the event.
Richard Gee
Media and Communications Manager
NZ Festival of Motor Racing
Ph 0210 2711926
E richard@nzfmr.co.nz