2010 Archive  

American Sprint Car Star Bud Keading competed here at Baypark on 23 January and was scheduled to race again on 30 January but was unable to do this due to the weather affected meeting. Bud last raced in New Zealand in 2002 at Western Springs and Ruapuna as team mate to PJ Chesson. An accomplished, successful racer Bud comes from a family of race drivers. His brother Tim has several World of Outlaw Feature wins to his credit and his father, Brent is a multiple Golden State Sprint Car Champion.

Bud is the current and three-time United States Auto Club Silver Crown Champion and amongst his accomplishments are three Golden State Championship Feature wins, two GLR 360 Sprint Car wins as well as a victory in the Knoxville Midget Nationals. He finished third at the Chili Bowl in 2000 and has many USAC and non-sanctioned sprint car victories to his credit.

Bud was keen to have another race at Baypark, a track he has heard a great deal about, but unfortunately the weather changed the plans. He has planned to make the trip in the last few years but other racing commitments have prevented him from travelling.

Grant Moffat's celebrated his 100th meeting performing his duties here at Baypark Speedway.

Grant has a varied history in speedway and has a long association prior to his becoming the announcer and the voice of speedway six years ago. He has been a successful competitor and he was the top points scorer in his first year of racing a saloon in Wellington in 1983. He won a Three Quarter Midget Feature at Western Springs in 1984 in his second race meeting in that class. Grant and his brother Todd shared a super saloon from 1992 to 1996 and they secured the most prestigious speedway sponsorship of the time with support from ETA Ripples. Grant orchestrated the exposure for the team that set the standard for sponsorship in New Zealand motorsport.

Grant was Track Manager at the 'old Baypark' and had the honour of promoting the last ever race meeting at the original Tauranga track. In recent seasons he has added the roles of Tour Escort, MC of the New Zealand Speedway Awards and Television Commentator for speedway programmes shown on TVNZ and SKY.

Congratulations to Grant and a huge thank you from us all for his efforts and for making our speedway that bit extra special. Happy 100th Grant!

Saloon Driver, Brian Fraser, was not with us on Saturday Night as he and Natasha tied the knot in a ceremony at his parents' home in the afternoon. We think that is a valid excuse for his skipping a race night and we wish the happy couple all the very very best for the future.

The Powerbuilt Tools Motor Sport Programme on TV1 Sunday afternoon featured saloon drivers Brent McClymont and Michelle Wymer as guests live in the studio. This is a build-up to the New Zealand Saloon Championship here at Baypark on January 1st and 2nd. Brent is the defending New Zealand Champion and he has admitted that he considers Michelle to be one of his biggest threats to his becoming a two time champion. This is good publicity for Baypark and for the saloon section as well as Michelle and Brent. Live TV is a different animal to a pre-recorded programme that they will be used to and it is a great opportunity and a valuable experience for them both.

We have some special events coming up on our Calendar in the next few weeks. One of the first is the North Island Sprint Car Championship and we are expecting a large number of sprint cars here on the 29th December. Entry forms went out yesterday so we will keep you informed of the numbers and who will be appearing.

Following the North Island Championship we will have the New Zealand Saloon Championship. This is a special event as we have the largest number of saloons at any track in the country and both current #1 and #3 are resident at Baypark. We are expecting a large number of competitors and entry forms will be sent out this week. It will be a two day show and will undoubtedly be the flag ship event of our season.

We will have an Australian Super Saloon visitor over the Christmas Break in Melbourne resident Wayne Belk who has shipped his car and will arrive later this week. Wayne will be appearing at several tracks around the country and will include Baypark for special events.

Later in the season we will have a special event for Youth Mini Stocks. This is intended to be a National event open to youth competitors from around the country. This will probably attract the largest number of visiting competitors of all the events scheduled and we hope it will become a regular item on our calendar.

Don't forget our Caravan Derby on January 9th and the Demo Derby the same night. Now's the time to get your car or caravan ready. Entry forms will be available on this website shortly. We will hold a Ramp Derby on February 20th as well. All these events are huge fun and we are looking forward to them.

The Saloons will start their La-Z-boy Series shortly. While they are concentrating on their build-up to the New Zealand Title the prestigious La-Z-boy Series is a well established and important event on our Calendar that all Baypark saloon competitors are looking forward to. We will have our usual South Pacific Championships for all classes and the Bay of Plenty Championships to round off the season. It will be busy times!

We are having some more noise issues here at Baypark Speedway. Tauranga City Council has issued us with an Abatement Notice and an Infringement Notice regarding noise levels at recent speedway meetings. Because nothing has changed between those meetings that have been determined as compliant and those meetings determined as non-compliant we are taking it very seriously and making further investigations. To be sure we are not doing anything wrong we are going to have to be less tolerant of even the most minor excesses in noise emissions from the race cars and we hope you will understand if we remove cars from the races that are not normally considered to be a problem. Noise issues are taken very seriously and the last thing we need to do is have our neighbours upset in any way.

As most of our regular fans will be aware the last couple of years track preparation has become increasingly difficult. It has been a slow deterioration but it seems that no matter what was done it was either too wet and lumpy or too dry and dusty. The advice of the many experts wasn't able to rectify the issue and it was only after having a track surface sample analysed in the United States that we have been able to make some progress. This has involved the addition of materials to change the PH levels, the electro-conductivity and capillary action of the track surface as well as the absorption rate and the levels of the other fourteen deficiencies that the analyst identified. The last two meetings the track has been far more acceptable and we have worked twelve hour days all this week on track preparation. We hope you will be patient as we are doing our very best to get it right.