NASCAR in Australia
Encyclopedia
The American stock car racing category NASCAR
raced in Australia
from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. After strong initial interest, particularly in Melbourne
at Australia's only Superspeedway, the Calder Park Thunderdome, the category collapsed in the early 2000s and has defied several attempts to revive it since then.
and Bathurst 500
winner, Bob Jane
, whose personal A$
54 m investment created the Calder Park Thunderdome, modelled on a scaled down version of the Charlotte Motor Speedway
. Australian NASCAR racing was sanctioned by Bob Jane
's Australian Stock Car Auto Racing (AUSCAR) authority on behalf of NASCAR in America but the relationship between the two was tenuous, and drifted over time.
In 1987 with the completion of the Calder Park Thunderdome extensions the much delayed first NASCAR race late in the 1987 racing season with the first major event, the 1988 Goodyear NASCAR 500
following on February 28, 1988. Initially Winston Cup drivers such as Neil Bonnett
, Bobby Allison
, Michael Waltrip
, Dave Marcis
and Kyle Petty
visited the Thunderdome but interest waned over time and big name guest drivers were lured from circuit racing to bolster fields. Allan Grice
and Dick Johnson were both early supporters of the concept, both traveling to the USA to race in the then Winston Cup series, although success was limited.
As popular V8 powered sedans became less successful in the Australian Touring Car Championship
, NASCAR arrived in Australia at exactly the right time to exploit a dissatisfaction within Australian race fans and crowds were initially promising, although they faded. The advent of night racing in 1991 brought crowds back to peak levels and for the next five years enjoyed success. This success was limited though with only one circuit available.
The Australian NASCARs were supporters of the Gold Coast Indy 300 run by CART
on the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit
during the early years when CAMS sanctioned categories ignored the race meeting, for until 1992 this was NASCAR's only opportunity to race away from its home circuit at Calder Park. The only other paved oval track that the Australian NASCARs raced at was the Bob Jane owned 1/2 mile Speedway Superbowl at the eastern end of the Adelaide International Raceway
. This limiting the category's national audience as the cars very rarely ventured west of Adelaide
. NASCARs only other regular stop was Sydney's Oran Park Raceway
, a road racing track that had lights allowing for night racing.
Occasional forays onto other circuit began during the 90s, first to Eastern Creek Raceway
in Sydney
before also racing as a support category at the Bathurst 1000
with the cars regularly being faster than the V8
Touring cars
on the Mount Panorama Circuit
s 1.1km long Conrod Straight, reaching over 310km/h. By the end of the 90s popularity had fallen below viability and the series moved to an exclusively road course calendar when NASCAR parted company with founder Bob Jane and thus the only paved speedways in Australia, the Thunderdome and AIRs Superbowl. Rebadged as V8 Stock Cars, the series lasted a single season on the 2001 Power Tour before grid numbers dropped to the point where continuing into 2002 was no longer viable.
There have been sporadic attempts to revive interest in NASCAR racing, assisted most recently by the profile of former V8 Supercar racer Marcos Ambrose
who now races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup in the US, but the continued unavailability of the long closed Thunderdome hinders most plans.
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing is a family-owned and -operated business venture that sanctions and governs multiple auto racing sports events. It was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1947–48. As of 2009, the CEO for the company is Brian France, grandson of the late Bill France Sr...
raced in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. After strong initial interest, particularly in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
at Australia's only Superspeedway, the Calder Park Thunderdome, the category collapsed in the early 2000s and has defied several attempts to revive it since then.
History
Bringing NASCAR to Australia was the creation of four-time Australian Touring Car ChampionshipAustralian Touring Car Championship
The Australian Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing award held in Australia since 1960. The series itself is no longer contested, but the title lives on, with the winner of the V8 Supercar Championship Series awarded the trophy and title of Australian Touring Car Champion.-History:The...
and Bathurst 500
Bathurst 1000
The Bathurst 1000 is a touring car race held annually at Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia...
winner, Bob Jane
Bob Jane
Robert "Bob" Jane is an Australian former race car driver and prominent businessman. A four-time winner of the Armstrong 500, the race that became the prestigious Bathurst 1000 and a four-time Australian Touring Car Champion, Jane is perhaps known best nowadays for his chain of tyre retailers,...
, whose personal A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
54 m investment created the Calder Park Thunderdome, modelled on a scaled down version of the Charlotte Motor Speedway
Charlotte Motor Speedway
Charlotte Motor Speedway is a motorsports complex located in Concord, North Carolina, United States 13 miles from Charlotte, North Carolina. The complex features a quad oval track that hosts NASCAR racing including the prestigious Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend and the Sprint All-Star Race...
. Australian NASCAR racing was sanctioned by Bob Jane
Bob Jane
Robert "Bob" Jane is an Australian former race car driver and prominent businessman. A four-time winner of the Armstrong 500, the race that became the prestigious Bathurst 1000 and a four-time Australian Touring Car Champion, Jane is perhaps known best nowadays for his chain of tyre retailers,...
's Australian Stock Car Auto Racing (AUSCAR) authority on behalf of NASCAR in America but the relationship between the two was tenuous, and drifted over time.
In 1987 with the completion of the Calder Park Thunderdome extensions the much delayed first NASCAR race late in the 1987 racing season with the first major event, the 1988 Goodyear NASCAR 500
1988 Goodyear NASCAR 500
The Goodyear NASCAR 500 race was run at the then new A$54 million Calder Park Thunderdome in Melbourne, Australia on February 28, 1988. The race was the first ever NASCAR event held outside of North America...
following on February 28, 1988. Initially Winston Cup drivers such as Neil Bonnett
Neil Bonnett
Lawrence Neil Bonnett was a NASCAR driver who compiled 18 victories and 20 poles over his 18-year career. The Alabama native currently ranks 35th in all-time NASCAR Cup victories. He appeared in the 1983 film Stroker Ace and the 1990 film Days of Thunder...
, Bobby Allison
Bobby Allison
Robert Arthur Allison is a former NASCAR Winston Cup driver and was named one of NASCAR's 50 greatest drivers. His two sons, Clifford Allison and Davey Allison followed him into racing, and both died within a year of each other....
, Michael Waltrip
Michael Waltrip
Michael Curtis Waltrip is a semi-former professional race car driver, co-owner of Michael Waltrip Racing, and a published author. He is the younger brother of three-time NASCAR champion and racing commentator Darrell Waltrip. Waltrip is a two-time winner of the Daytona 500; having won the race in...
, Dave Marcis
Dave Marcis
Dave Marcis is a retired driver on the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit whose career spanned five decades. Marcis won five times over this tenure, twice at Richmond, including his final win in 1982...
and Kyle Petty
Kyle Petty
Kyle Eugene Petty is a former American NASCAR driver and is currently a co-host for NASCAR RaceDay and panel member for NASCAR Smarts which are both on SPEED. He also commentates for TNT in the summer. He is the son of racer Richard Petty, grandson of racer Lee Petty, and father of the late Adam...
visited the Thunderdome but interest waned over time and big name guest drivers were lured from circuit racing to bolster fields. Allan Grice
Allan Grice
Allan Maxwell Grice OAM , known to motor-racing fans as Gricey, is an Australian former racing driver and politician, most famous for twice winning the prestigious Bathurst 1000 , and as a privateer driver of a Holden in the Australian Touring Car Championship.Grice also had a successful second...
and Dick Johnson were both early supporters of the concept, both traveling to the USA to race in the then Winston Cup series, although success was limited.
As popular V8 powered sedans became less successful in the Australian Touring Car Championship
Australian Touring Car Championship
The Australian Touring Car Championship is a touring car racing award held in Australia since 1960. The series itself is no longer contested, but the title lives on, with the winner of the V8 Supercar Championship Series awarded the trophy and title of Australian Touring Car Champion.-History:The...
, NASCAR arrived in Australia at exactly the right time to exploit a dissatisfaction within Australian race fans and crowds were initially promising, although they faded. The advent of night racing in 1991 brought crowds back to peak levels and for the next five years enjoyed success. This success was limited though with only one circuit available.
The Australian NASCARs were supporters of the Gold Coast Indy 300 run by CART
Champ Car
Champ Car was the name for a class and specification of open wheel cars used in American Championship Car Racing for many decades, primarily for use in the Indianapolis 500 auto race...
on the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit
Surfers Paradise Street Circuit
The Surfers Paradise Street Circuit is a temporary street circuit at Surfers Paradise, in south east Queensland, Australia. The challenging track has several fast sections and four chicanes. It is the third of three motor racing circuits that have existed in the Surfers Paradise area, after the...
during the early years when CAMS sanctioned categories ignored the race meeting, for until 1992 this was NASCAR's only opportunity to race away from its home circuit at Calder Park. The only other paved oval track that the Australian NASCARs raced at was the Bob Jane owned 1/2 mile Speedway Superbowl at the eastern end of the Adelaide International Raceway
Adelaide International Raceway
The Adelaide International Raceway is a permanent circuit owned by Australian Motorsport Club Limited under the auspices of the Bob Jane Corporation. It is located on Port Wakefield Road at Virginia, a small town just north of Adelaide, South Australia, and is round the corner from Speedway City...
. This limiting the category's national audience as the cars very rarely ventured west of Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
. NASCARs only other regular stop was Sydney's Oran Park Raceway
Oran Park Raceway
Oran Park Raceway was a motor racing circuit at Narellan in southwestern Sydney, New South Wales, Australia which was operational from 1962 to 2010....
, a road racing track that had lights allowing for night racing.
Occasional forays onto other circuit began during the 90s, first to Eastern Creek Raceway
Eastern Creek Raceway
Eastern Creek International Raceway is a motorsports circuit located on Brabham Drive, Eastern Creek , New South Wales, Australia, adjacent to the Western Sydney International Dragway. It was built and is owned by the New South Wales Government and is operated by the...
in Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
before also racing as a support category at the Bathurst 1000
Bathurst 1000
The Bathurst 1000 is a touring car race held annually at Mount Panorama Circuit in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia...
with the cars regularly being faster than the V8
V8 engine
A V8 engine is a V engine with eight cylinders mounted on the crankcase in two banks of four cylinders, in most cases set at a right angle to each other but sometimes at a narrower angle, with all eight pistons driving a common crankshaft....
Touring cars
Touring car racing
Touring car racing is a general term for a number of distinct auto racing competitions in heavily-modified street cars. It is notably popular in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Scandinavia and Britain.-Characteristics of a touring car:...
on the Mount Panorama Circuit
Mount Panorama Circuit
Mount Panorama Circuit is a motor racing track located in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia. It is the home of the Bathurst 12 Hour motor race, held each February, and the Bathurst 1000 motor race, held each October...
s 1.1km long Conrod Straight, reaching over 310km/h. By the end of the 90s popularity had fallen below viability and the series moved to an exclusively road course calendar when NASCAR parted company with founder Bob Jane and thus the only paved speedways in Australia, the Thunderdome and AIRs Superbowl. Rebadged as V8 Stock Cars, the series lasted a single season on the 2001 Power Tour before grid numbers dropped to the point where continuing into 2002 was no longer viable.
There have been sporadic attempts to revive interest in NASCAR racing, assisted most recently by the profile of former V8 Supercar racer Marcos Ambrose
Marcos Ambrose
Marcos Ambrose is a championship winning Australian racing car driver. He currently drives the #9 Stanley Black & Decker Ford Fusion for Richard Petty Motorsports in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series...
who now races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup in the US, but the continued unavailability of the long closed Thunderdome hinders most plans.
Champions
| Season | Driver | Car | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1989–90 | Robin Best | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
|
| 1990–91 | Robin Best | Ford Thunderbird Ford Thunderbird The Thunderbird , is an automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company in the United States over eleven model generations from 1955 through 2005... |
|
| 1991–92 | George Elliott | Chevrolet Lumina Chevrolet Lumina The North American Chevrolet Lumina sedan , coupe and minivan were first introduced in 1989 for the 1990 model year as a new range of vehicles from the Chevrolet brand of General Motors to replace the Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Celebrity sedan, and the Monte Carlo coupe. The Lumina was an answer... |
NASTRACK |
| 1992–93 | Max Dumesny Max Dumesny Max Dumesny is an Australian professional Sprintcar driver. Dumsney was born and raised in Victoria but has resided in Nelson, New South Wales since the mid-1990s, although his Sprintcar carries the number V5 that he has used throughout his career, although he has changed that to Australia 1 when... |
Oldsmobile Cutlass Oldsmobile Cutlass The Oldsmobile Cutlass is a line of automobiles made by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors. The Cutlass began as a unibody compact car, but saw its greatest success as a body-on-frame intermediate car.... |
John Sidney Racing |
| 1993–94 | Barry Graham | Oldsmobile Cutlass Oldsmobile Cutlass The Oldsmobile Cutlass is a line of automobiles made by the Oldsmobile division of General Motors. The Cutlass began as a unibody compact car, but saw its greatest success as a body-on-frame intermediate car.... |
John Sidney Racing |
| 1994–95 | Brad Jones | Chevrolet Lumina Chevrolet Lumina The North American Chevrolet Lumina sedan , coupe and minivan were first introduced in 1989 for the 1990 model year as a new range of vehicles from the Chevrolet brand of General Motors to replace the Chevrolet Camaro, Chevrolet Celebrity sedan, and the Monte Carlo coupe. The Lumina was an answer... |
Brad Jones Racing Brad Jones Racing Brad Jones Racing is an Australian motor racing team centred around brothers Kim and Brad Jones and is based in Albury, New South Wales. Presently the team compete in the V8 Supercar Series, which they joined in 2000. Recently they have also returned to the Australian Formula Ford Championship... |
| 1995–96 | Jim Richards Jim Richards (race driver) Jim Richards is a New Zealand racing driver who has spent most of his racing life in Australia. While retired from professional racing, Richards continues to compete in the historic category Touring Car Masters while running a team in the Australian GT Championship... |
Pontiac Grand Prix Pontiac Grand Prix Picking up where the Pontiac Ventura model left off, the Grand Prix first appeared in the Pontiac line for 1962. It was essentially a standard Pontiac Catalina coupe with minimal outside chrome trim and a sportier interior... |
Jim Richards Racing |
| 1996–97 | Kim Jane | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
Kim Jane Motorsport |
| 1997–98 | Kim Jane | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
Kim Jane Motorsport |
| 1998–99 | Kim Jane | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
Kim Jane Motorsport |
| 1999–2000 | Kim Jane | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
Kim Jane Motorsport |
| 2000–01 | Tony Southwell | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
TSR |
| 2001 | Andrew Miedecke | Chevrolet Monte Carlo Chevrolet Monte Carlo The Chevrolet Monte Carlo was an American-made two-door coupe introduced for model year 1970, and manufactured over six generations through model year 2007. It was marketed as a personal-luxury coupe through most of its history, with the last model version being classified as a full-sized coupe... |
Whiteline Racing |