ATCC: ATCC: Wellington goes V8

[Note that the Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship is cancelled for this year; however, APTCC is still an appropriate keyword for the standalone Wellington race. --ed.]

The street race in Wellington, New Zealand, is going against international trends this December by dropping the two-litre supertourers as the feature class. Instead the meeting on December 2-3 will feature two sprint race for the five-litre Australian V8s, ie the Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons.

Most of the top Australians are expected to compete, starting with Peter Brock and Tomas Mezera in the Holden Racing Team Commodores. It was indicated at the media conference this morning that new Ausie champion John Bowe and Dick Johnson would also be competing, in Fords. Organisers expect about a dozen cars altogether.

The Wellington race, right on the city waterfront, has been going for about 10 years and used to attract some top-class entries, notably the Schnitzer BMW team. It was a round of the world touring car championship in 1987.

More recently it was decided to move the race to the two-litre format, and last year it was a round of the Asia-Pacific touring car championship, with a fairly small entry. Wellington was to have been a round of the Asia-Pacific series again this year, but that championship was cancelled because of poor entries. It was expected that the race would be run with two-litre cars mainly from Australia and New Zealand, but now this class has been dropped altogether and replaced by the V8s.

It seems there will be no NZ drivers in the feature event this year. In particular, Paul Radisich will not be driving a V8, and Holden has ignored the chance of putting Kiwi Greg Murphy in their second car. (Murphy is driving for HRT -- which incidentally is part of the Tom Walkinsahw empire -- at Sandown and Bathurst.)

There will also be a meeting for the V8s at Pukekohe (near Auckland) a week after the Wellington event.

Bernard

Four wheels good, two wheels better

-- Bernard Carpinter

Four wheels good, two wheels better