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Politics.. or Who Owns This Track?

© Philip Northeast

Hot Off The Press Lowndes defects to Ford!

One of the longest running silly seasons in Australian motor racing history took a major turn on Thursday the fourth of January. Craig Lowndes, the hottest property in Australian motor sport, ended months of speculation by signing a five year deal with Ford.

The team will be a revamped Gibson Motor sport. They formerly ran Holdens under the Kmart racing banner.

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Just Who is running this Series

The change from a mostly amateur pastime to fully professional sports entertainment went smoothly at first. CAMS (Confederation Of Australian Motor sport) the governing body of motor sport in Australia is a volunteer based organisation representing all the motor sport clubs. They set the rules for the touring car class and allocated championship races to individual circuits. The individual race organisers did their own marketing and teams had to turn up to championship races to be title contenders.

The start of the individual tracks losing absolute control came in 1986 when Shell returned to motor racing as naming rights sponsor for the series. Shell signs around the track were part of getting the race and Channel Seven had the television rights to all the series races.

When V8 Supercars replaced turbo cars in 1993 crowds increased to record levels for every race meeting. The teams wanted to share in the extra money and have a say in the marketing of the series, so they formed TEGA (Touring car Entrants Group of Australia). They modelled their marketing and promotional approach on FOCA's (Formula One Constructors Association) working with the governing body, in this case CAMS. Eventually a marketing company joined them to form AVESCO (Australia Vee Eight Supercar Company) to run the series.

The big bust up came over television rights. Channel Seven had done a lot for touring car racing in Australia since the sixties, mainly for the annual endurance race at Bathurst. Their telecasts of this race helped make it into one of Australia's sporting icons. Their RACECAM technology was ground breaking and is used overseas in races such as NASCAR's Daytona 500. Part of the appeal of this race to Channel Seven was the timing. The traditional first Sunday in October date fell in a sporting vacumn between the finish of the football season in September and the start of our major summer sport of cricket. The other touring car races often clash with Sunday afternoon football that Channel Seven broadcast and they relegate the motor racing to a late night replay.