It was a very trying night at the track on Saturday night. Our long, hot summer has made the already difficult task of track preparation even more so and it culminated in a night that nobody really enjoyed very much. Let me explain. Nowra Speedway is built on top of a natural water course. This can be seen in the Google Earth image above. The larger of the tracks is the old trotting track which is now only used for training horses while the smaller, “D” shaped layout is the speedway. The water course flows roughly south/north and is bridged by the actual track itself at both ends. It is also bridged by a culvert that allows access to the full pit area on the northern end of the track and it finishes in the dam at the far northern end of the facility. In times of extreme rainfall the dam overflows and backs up into the pit area and it is this problem that can lead to the cancellation of meetings due to rain. It is not so much that the track surface itself is unusable but rather that the pit area and access road become impassable.
The water that is used to water and prepare the track is taken from this dam, pumped up into the water track and then sprayed on the track. In my nearly 10 years of attending the speedway I have never known the dam to dry up but the combination of the hot summer and very little rainfall has led to this happening and it made track preparation on Saturday night extremely difficult.
In order to make sense of this, please bear with me while I explain the arcane process of preparing a clay speedway track. It would seem strange to add water to a clay track as logic would suggest that this would make it very sticky but this is actually what is required. So, the process goes something like this (as explained to me by track curator extraordinaire, Dave Ford). At the conclusion of a meeting the grader is taken onto the track and it is ripped up. This happens before the track crew goes home on race night. The track is then left like this till midweek before the next meeting. Late in the week, the track is heavily watered and graded flat again. On the Friday night before race day the track is checked and water added if the weather has been especially hot.
On race day the track surface can appear dry but the under-surface is still quite wet. On race day morning the track is VERY lightly watered and then left until the cars commence wheel packing just before the races start. At this stage it appears to be over-wet but all is as it should be. As explained before, wheel packing involves the cars circulating very slowly, gradually squeegy-ing the excess water down the track until it finally ends up in the channel on the pole line. As the process goes on the track becomes smooth and is finally ready for racing. Nobody likes doing wheel packing because it makes the cars dirty but everyone knows that, if it is done properly, it makes for a great racing surface for the night.
On Saturday, which was very hot, the track curator found that more water needed to be added late in the afternoon. The problem was that the dam is now empty. Terry was able to source a small supply of water from an above-ground tank in the trotting track compound but it wasn’t going to be enough. Consequently, wheel packing was able to prepare a decent surface but the track was too dry right from the commencement of racing. On very dry nights it is common to run the spray around several times during the night to maintain a “grippy” racing surface and keep the dust down (yes, a clay track can actually get dusty). This we were unable to do and the track quickly turned into a dust bowl.
Dust and a dry track are the enemies of a good night’s racing. The drivers hate it because it makes for an inconsistent surface and because the dust restricts visibility. At its worst, this can become a serious safety issue. Understandably, a dry track and dust are hated by the spectators because it obscures their visibility of the racing and hurts their eyes. On Saturday night we had the dry track and dust and it eventually led to the shortening of the main feature race on safety grounds.
No significant rain is predicted in the area for the next fortnight so it is to be hoped that the club is able to obtain an alternative source of water to allow the next meeting to go ahead.
Are you still with me? Good, because the second track that I want to mention is separated from Nowra by a considerable distance and a significant period of time. This story builds on the above in terms of its connection to it but it also speaks to the more human side of the story, illustrating how arrogance and ego can sometimes over-ride good sense to the detriment of those who are involved.
It was 1989, yes, nearly 30 years ago. I was head of commentary at Canberra’s Tralee Speedway. Sharing the box with me that season was Moruya’s Jack Hogg, perhaps the most revered mike men in speedway’s recent history. And Tralee was chose by the Speedway Control Council to host the 1989 Australian Sprintcar Title meeting, one of the most prestigious meetings on the calendar. The promoters that season were two local business men who brought to the task a huge degree of enthusiasm and commitment but only a tiny amount of experience in promotion. Some even suggested at the time that David Dawes and Peter Lawson were out of their depth trying to promote such an important meeting but, after being involved in many planning meetings with them before the event, I grew to understand that they were methodical and meticulous planners, just what was required to pull of this huge task.
On Friday afternoon the pits were already full of transporters and cars as competitors from all over Australia made the journey to the ACT to try and capture speedway’s most desired trophy. And, even before the evening began to fall, trouble reared its head. A group of the best-known sprintcar drivers (mostly from Sydney) came to David and Peter and told them that the track surface was terrible and that they would never be able to race on it. Now, in light of what I have said above about the stages of track preparation, you’re probably already guessing what was going to happen next. “We can’t race on that track unless you give it a lot more water,” they said. At first the promoters insisted that all was well but the drivers kept up the pressure until finally Peter and David relented and sent the track curator out on the water truck to add water, lots of it.
The outcome was as tragic as it was predictable. The heavy watering brought the sub-surface water to the top and the track turned into a bog-hole. Tender vehicles became bogged and the grader had to be called in to pull them out. By the time racing was due to start the track looked more like a rallycross track and, once racing began, the cars struggled around in ruts that were nearly two feet deep, trying to find some dry surface and make forward progress. The heat races on Friday night were a farce. The track was one-lane only and, if you drew grid #1 you won. For everyone else it was a complete lottery. Somehow, in the early hours of Saturday morning, enough heat races had been completed (though you could scarcely have called them races) to allow proceedings to be mercifully called off. It was planned to complete the uncompleted part of Friday night’s programme on Saturday night as well as finish off the heats and the 25 lap feature. However, none of this addressed the core issue of how were the organisers going to do so on a track that was now even worse than it had been at the commencement of racing?
Peter and David called on the track curator and he said that there was only one solution. It’s wasn’t pretty but there wasn’t really any choice. Out came the grader and the whole slushy surface was removed, graded down and piled up into the infield. What was left was a hard-packed solid base of bedrock clay. And it was on this totally unsuitable surface on which the remaining heat races and the feature races were contested on the Saturday night. The track was hard as a concrete runway, as slippery as a greasy pig and it quickly broke down into its components with the whole facility being shrouded in a thick layer of yellow dust. Again, it was a one-lane track. Gary Rush, the “Master Blaster”, by virtue of his heat races finishes, started out of pole and bolted, never headed to take out his 9th Australian Title. Throughout the whole 25 laps there were only two significant passing moves, both by the late George Tatnell, moving him from 4th at the start to 2nd at the flag.
During the running of one of the late heat races a very irate lady came up to the commentary box with her little son, complaining (justifiably) that a large stone had been dislodged from the surface and flung into the crowd, hitting the poor little guy on the forehead. Short of offering sympathy there wasn’t rally anything I could do about it. The feature race was concluded close to 2 am and, as you will see from the video, nobody seemed too delighted in the post-race interviews. It’s no wonder why.
The 1989 title race has gone down in speedway history as one of the most infamous speedway weekends of recent years. So, what went wrong? Well, let me start by saying that no blame can be laid at the feet of the promoters who did, in my opinion, everything they could have done to make the meeting a success. The fiasco surrounding the event broke both of them and they walked away from speedway at the end of the season, never to return. I couldn’t blame them.
There is no doubt in my mind that the group of drivers who effectively “ganged up” on Peter and David, are those who should bear the blame for what transpired. What Peter and David SHOULD have done was told them to bugger off and let them prepare THEIR track the way that THEY knew would give the best surface on which to race. Trading on their naivety and lack of experience, the drivers got their own way and it jumped up and bit them big time. Unfortunately, it wrecked what could have been a great meeting for the OTHER drivers, the spectators and everyone else involved.
Thank you for staying with me, because, as I said, this story is about more than just speedway. I’m sure the lesson is not wasted on you. Finally, to underscore my story here IS the 1989 title feature race in its entirety. The commentary is by the doyen of speedway journalists, my good friend, Dennis Newlyn and it was added in the studio afterwards. Jack Hogg and I called the race live and it is me doing the trophy presentations afterwards.
In the old days, speedway drivers used to be called “dusty heroes.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t intended to be quite like this.
