It’s a well-worn phrase, but nothing else seems fitting for this: the final curtain being lowered on Pukekohe Park Raceway. This is truly the end of an era

Words: Steve Holmes Photos: Terry Marshall, Steve Twist, Mike Feisst, Garry Simkin, Allan Cameron, Graeme Bennett, Martin Derbyshire

From inception, Pukekohe Park Raceway has been subject to a love/hate relationship within the Kiwi motorsport community. Its location and proximity to our largest city has ensured it has hosted the biggest and most important racing events on the New Zealand motor racing calendar. Yet its facilities and presentation often fell well short of international standards, and of a track befitting its status.

Indeed, throughout much of its history it has been the worst-equipped permanent racing track in New Zealand. Pukekohe’s existence was the result of necessity rather than desire. By 1962, motor racing in New Zealand had become enormously successful, and every summer the nation played host to a series of races contested by current Formula 1 teams and drivers wishing to escape the harsh northern winters; every January New Zealand would become an international motorsport mecca, where races would be held on consecutive weekends. From here, many participants would continue on to Australia before finally heading back home.

In 1950, the first New Zealand Grand Prix (NZGP) was contested at the RNZAF Base Ohakea, 25 kilometres north of Palmerston North. Following a two-year hiatus, the event was held again, at what would become its home for the next decade: Ardmore Airport. The creation of the NZGP came one year after a similarly important race was first conducted on the wide-open spaces of RNZAF Station Wigram near Christchurch. Together, these two events would be coveted by drivers in what would become the first Tasman Series in 1964, consisting of four races in New Zealand, followed by four in Australia. The importance the biggest and best Formula 1 teams placed on winning the Tasman Series was immense.

The 1962 NZGP was won by Stirling Moss, with John Surtees and Bruce McLaren filling the final podium positions. This was to be the final event held at Ardmore — the closure of Mangere Airport as a light aircraft facility, in order for it to be constructed into what is now Auckland Airport, meant Ardmore was soon to become much busier. As such, motor racing activities would have to find a new home.

At that time, New Zealand had just two permanent motor racing facilities — one in Levin, opened in 1956, and Teretonga, just outside Invercargill, which arrived one year later. The tiny Levin circuit was constructed on the inside of the Horowhenua town’s horse racing course — a smart concept as the various necessities for hosting a racing event, such as spectator parking spaces, toilets, grandstand, pit area, and so on, were already in place. Initially just 1.6 kilometres in length, the track was extended 2.4 kilometres in 1960 to accommodate the increasingly larger and faster cars competing at the time and so it could start hosting the international races when they came to New Zealand.

Levin was the brainchild of Ron Frost, who was born in England but emigrated to New Zealand in 1952. A keen motorcycle racer, he was no doubt inspired by the Aintree Motor Racing Circuit, located within the Aintree Racecourse in Merseyside, England.

Horse racing facilities quickly became a fashionable and successful formula in Australasia. Warwick Farm in New South Wales opened in 1960, and Melbourne’s Sandown International Raceway opened in 1962. Both were constructed where a horse racing course and facility already existed. Where they differed to Levin, however, was that the car racing tracks were built around the outside of the horse ovals, rather than inside. This made them much larger, and significantly faster.

The new Ardmore replacement would do likewise. The marriage of horse people and motor racing people has invariably been one of friction. After the investigation of various locations to find one suitable for building a permanent motor racing circuit within the Auckland region, the Franklin Racing Club eventually made land available for a circuit to be built around the Pukekohe horse racing track.

Following various delays, work on the Pukekohe racing circuit finally began in August 1962, but ongoing adverse weather prompted setbacks. South Auckland construction company W Stevenson & Sons Ltd built the track, battling the constant rain as they did so. Unfortunately, poor management and planning by the grand prix organisation resulted in a funding shortfall. The cost to build the track was £60,000, of which £20,000 was raised through public debenture. Stevensons wrote off £15,000 as a gift to see the project through. There were also a few interest-free loans. However, when the circuit was finally opened for business, it was in significant debt. Stevenson & Sons completed the track just a week before the running of the 1963 New Zealand Grand Prix, held on 5 January.

Pukekohe car racing would always be at the mercy of the Franklin Racing Club. For example, one early stipulation was that no car racing could take place at the circuit if there was a horse racing event within 80 kilometres! While New Zealand now had a third permanent motor racing facility, somehow the Pukekohe venue just felt a little temporary.

The original Pukekohe track layout measured 3.54 kilometres in length. It has remained largely unchanged since its inception, but the 1962 design featured a sharp left-hand bend just after the start/finish line that doubled-back to a ‘loop’, which eventually linked to the short straight between the current turns three and four. The loop was also used as a stand-alone club circuit, and provided a popular spectator viewing area.

In 1967, the track layout sidestepped the loop for the first time, making it much faster, although many considered this removed much of its character. The loop remained in use, however, both as a club circuit and for endurance racing.

On 8 January 1972, while chasing John McCormack’s Elfin Repco down the back straight on lap 52 during the NZGP, Graeme Lawrence pulled out of the Elfin’s slipstream at the kink to attempt a pass, just as the pair were about to lap Brian Faloon in the Rorstan Porsche. Faloon saw McCormack in his mirrors, and pulled to the left to let him through, unaware that Lawrence’s Lola was tucked up behind; at that very moment, Lawrence ducked to the left to pass McCormack. The Lola hit the rear of the Rorstan; Faloon was sent headlong into an earth embankment, while Lawrence’s Lola cartwheeled down the track. Lawrence suffered broken legs, wrists, and concussion, and Faloon sustained a head injury that ultimately proved fatal. As a result, in an effort to reduce speeds, two ungainly chicanes were implemented: one on the back straight, and the other in front of the main spectator area. They remained in place for a few years, before, thankfully, being removed.

The 1963 New Zealand Grand Prix suffered somewhat with a poor — for the time — turnout of international drivers. However, the 14-car grid featured John Surtees, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, and Bruce McLaren, along with young up-and-comer Chris Amon, whose international career was just about to take off. Kiwi McLaren claimed pole position in his Cooper T62, but Lola driver Surtees took out the 75-lap, 266 kilometre epic.

The first Tasman Series took place in 1964, with Levin hosting the opening race on 4 January, followed by Pukekohe the following weekend. Wigram and Teretonga, plus the four Australian races at Sandown, Warwick Farm, Lakeside, and Longford, completed the series. The two most important races were the NZGP at Pukekohe and the Australian Grand Prix at Sandown. Bruce McLaren won the NZGP and Jack Brabham the AGP. The Tasman Series used a special 2.5-litre engine formula unique to this part of the world.

Formula 1 was still using its 1.5-litre formula, but such was the pulling power of the Tasman Series that Formula 1 teams built special Tasman cars, powered by 2.5-litre engines. It was an incredible time for New Zealand motorsport, and the decade would only get better.

Following that first Tasman Series, Pukekohe would shift forward to open the series every year, and played host to the Grand Prix every year apart from 1974, when it shifted to Wigram, as the Commonwealth Games were being hosted in Christchurch from 25 January to 2 February.

The final year for the special 2.5-litre Formula 1 Tasman cars was 1969, with the series switching to Formula 5000 regulations for 1970. In that time, the list of NZGP winners at Pukekohe included Surtees (1963), McLaren (1964), Graham Hill (1965 and 1966), Jackie Stewart (1967), and Chris Amon (1968 and 1969). Combined, these drivers would win a total of six Formula 1 World Championships. However, the role call of top international racing drivers extended well beyond NZGP winners and included Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Phil Hill, Jochen Rindt, Denny Hulme, Piers Courage, Pedro Rodríguez, Derek Bell, Frank Matich, Frank Gardner, Lex Davison, Richard Attwood, and Kevin Bartlett. Indeed, such was the quality of the internationals that, during this period, not one resident New Zealander won the NZGP; both McLaren and Amon were classed as international drivers racing for international teams when they won.

When New Zealand switched to the thundering Formula 5000 regulations for 1970, so the quality continued, but now resident Kiwis fared much better against the internationals. However, it wasn’t until 1976, when Ken Smith took victory, that a resident Kiwi finally won the NZGP, notwithstanding John McMillan’s victory in the 1950 Ohakea event, in which only one international driver was competing.

There was another switch in 1977, this time to Formula Atlantic/Pacific. By now, the Tasman Series had also met its demise, although international drivers — most notably those from Australia — still ventured here in numbers. Formula Atlantic was a junior formula that attracted a whole new breed of drivers, in particular, young and fearless hot shoes working their way up the motorsport ladder with their sights set on Formula 1. Future Formula 1 World Champion Keke Rosberg won the NZGPs in both 1977 and 1978.

While the international drivers and teams were a natural drawcard, our local contingent also shone. In 1991 — the last year the NZGP was held at Pukekohe — Craig Baird was the victor. But Steve Millen (1980), Dave McMillan (1981), David Oxton (1983), Paul Radisich (1988), and Ken Smith (1990) all sprayed the champagne as NZGP winners during the Atlantic era.

By the 1980s, interest in single-seaters was waning with race fans and touring car racing fast gaining in popularity. Every year since the mid 1960s, an endurance race for New Zealand-assembled sedans took place. This ultimately morphed into the Benson & Hedges 500. It was held at Pukekohe, and was an important date on the annual motorsport calendar.

In 1985, the first Wellington Street Race for FIA Group A touring cars was run. The Wellington spectacle was round one in a two-race series, with Pukekohe hosting the second event. Big international names in that 1985 series included Peter Brock, Dick Johnson, Larry Perkins, Tom Walkinshaw, and Michel Delcourt. The series continued until 1994, before taking a break for a year and returning again in 1996, by which time V8 Supercars were the featured formula. Only 12 cars made the 1996 trip, and it wasn’t a round of the Australian V8 Supercars Championship, but the big Aussie V8s proved a hit, and young Kiwi Greg Murphy emerged as a talent of the future.

In 2001, Pukekohe would host a round of the V8 Supercars Championship for the first time, and it was Murphy who proved the star of the show, winning all three races to a rapturous reception. Indeed, while many Kiwis took Pukekohe for granted, with its dated facilities and uncompromising bumps, the Australians were completely enamoured of it. These fast, crazy, old-school circuits were by now a dying breed across the pond, and the loud, fast Aussie V8s were utterly spectacular around the flowing and narrow high-speed layout. In 2007, we saw the last V8 Supercars race at Pukekohe for several years, with clouds looming over its future. The New Zealand round shifted to a street course in Hamilton, but when that failed to succeed as hoped, the race returned to Pukekohe from 2013, with a cash injection of $6.6 million pumped into the facility for improvements and updates, and the addition of a new chicane along the back straight, which added another much-needed overtaking zone.

When Pukekohe first arrived in 1963, many bemoaned its lack of character compared to Ardmore, but, with the benefit of 60 years’ hindsight, it would seem this grand old lady of New Zealand motorsport was actually pretty characterful after all. Its design ensures spectators are close to the action — a feature sadly missing from modern circuits with their vast run-off areas — while the grassy spectator banking lends itself to a colosseum-type atmosphere, where the warriors doing battle plunge past at speed up across the hill.

And disaster is ever-present. With the track’s fast and flowing layout, and close walls, when things go wrong, they go wrong in the most spectacular way. Pukekohe is a track that warrants respect. Tickford team boss, Tim Edwards, was interviewed at the final event, and spoke of how his two rookie drivers Jake Kostecki and Thomas Randle ran their first practice laps. When they returned to the pits with eyes like saucers, they quipped, “Holy shit, this place is hard!”

Since 2012, the Jason Richards Trophy has been awarded to the driver scoring the most points over the Pukekohe Supercars race weekend. The brilliant and likeable young Kiwi passed away in 2011, and his friend Jason Bright, who like Richards drove for Brad Jones Racing, won the trophy in its inaugural year. Bright was in tears as he stood on the podium, as was Brad Jones and much of his team. That this driver and this team won created an almost otherworldly feel about what had just happened.

The Pukekohe Supercars races were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the race finally returned in 2022. However, when the teams arrived back in New Zealand, they did so knowing this would be their final time at this epic circuit.

It really came as no surprise when, earlier this year, the announcement came that Pukekohe Park Raceway would cease operation as of early 2023, and that the facility would revert to horse racing only. Early signs were there; the land on which the old loop was built, and which has never been torn up, was recently put up for sale. When a racetrack and the land immediately surrounding it starts getting sold off, the outcome is inevitable. And so it was; while racing will continue for a few more months, the Supercars spectacular was the big send-off that farewelled this long-serving course.

The final Supercars event took on a real carnival atmosphere, and the Aussie visitors appeared to grieve for the track’s demise as much as we Kiwis did. Greg Murphy’s Supercars race win tally of nine will remain forever unbeaten. Shane van Gisbergen, who normally suppresses his emotions so well, was fighting back the tears on Sunday. In that last race, where he started eighth on the grid in his Triple Eight Holden Commodore, he dug deep and found something extra special, and eventually pulled off a death-defying pass on long-time race leader Cameron Waters to muscle ahead, coming up over the hill in front of a packed spectator bank, which went absolutely berserk.

Some racers focus only on the future, and history holds little interest. Those drivers quite openly dismissed the end of Pukekohe as no big deal, stating that it is the Kiwi race fans, and not the track itself, that create the atmosphere this event is famous for. They’re right, of course, but Pukekohe certainly has a way of stirring those crowds, and it’s from here the atmosphere is driven.

Greg Murphy was perhaps the most upset about this historic track closing, and his emotions played out as van Gisbergen bombed across the finish line to take that final victory. It seems only right that a Kiwi should hold the most Supercars race wins, and that a Kiwi should also win the last-ever race.

Long-serving Supercars commentators and former drivers Neil Crompton, Mark Skaife, and Mark Larkham all have a great appreciation for history, and all appeared genuinely sad to see this historic old track meet its end. Crompton’s eloquent way with words is what makes him so integral to the sport; on this occasion, his parting shot was as simple as it was succinct: “Farewell, Pukekohe. We have loved the ride.”

The end of an era, without a doubt.