Amaroo Park

Amaroo Park was a 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) motor racing circuit located in Annangrove, New South Wales, in the present-day western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. It opened in 1967, hosting its first motorcycle meeting on 26 February with a 30 lap production race won by Larry Simons on a BSA Spitfire in heavy rain. The first dry meeting saw the lap record set by Jack Ahearn at 63.9 seconds. The road circuit served as a host for a variety of competitions including the Castrol 6 Hour motorcycle race, the Australian Touring Car Championship, Formula Ford, Formula 5000, historic racing and others. The last Australian Touring Car round to take place at the circuit was 1994.

Amaroo Park held its own touring car series at various times, including the Sun-7 Chesterfield Series in the early to mid 1970’s and the later AMSCAR series.

The complex also had a hillclimb, a motocross track, a little used speedway track and a short circuit track.

The circuit closed forever after the last meeting was held there on 23 August 1998. The meeting was billed as the "Goodbye Amaroo State open Meeting" with a mix of classes including Sports Sedans, HQ's and Group N Historic Touring Cars. The final race held at Amaroo Park was a "Butchers Picnic" which included the top 3 cars from the competing classes all in one final race. The race was run as a Butchers Picnic as a salute to the very first meeting at the circuit where the first races run were indeed Butchers Picnics. The race, called "The Last Race, The Main Event, Amaroo's Final Fling" started at 4:30pm and was held over 10 laps. It was won by Sydney driver Ray Lintott driving a Porsche 911 Turbo with a race time of 9:16.4942. The final driver, Andrew Papadopoulos driving a Alfa Romeo GTV, crossed the line at 4:40pm bringing the curtain down on one of Australia's most popular race circuits after over 31 years of continuous operation.^[1][2]

At its closing the outright lap record for the 1.94 km circuit was 0:44.36 set by John Bowe in 1987 driving a 5.8L Chevrolet powered Veskanda Group A Sports Car.

A housing estate now covering most of the site. There is no trace of the road or pit lane of the circuit remaining, with only the lake that was inside the last couple of corners being the landmark identifying the location of the former track.

Australian Touring Car Championship

Amaroo Park first held a round of the ATCC when it hosted Round 4 of the 7 race 1974 Australian Touring Car Championship. The race was won by Peter Brock driving his Holden Dealer Team Holden Torana SL/R 5000. The circuit would go on to host 15 rounds of the championship between 1974 and its last ATCC race in 1994. The last race was won by Mark Skaife driving his Gibson Motor Sport Holden VP Commodore giving Holden the bookends on Amaroo Park's participation in the ATCC.

AMSCAR

One of the features of Amaroo Park's life has been its in-house touring car series. Popular with spectators and easy for nearby ATN-7 to telecast, it became the backbone of the Sydney touring car scene, a scene which has evaporated since it died with the major touring car teams now operating from Melbourne and south-east Queensland. On many occasions AMSCAR events held larger and better quality grid than the national Australian Touring Car Championship.

In 1981 AMSCAR was limited to cars with an engine capacity of no more than 3.5 litres. That limit was relaxed from the 1982 series allowing the V8 powered Holden Commodore's, Ford Falcon's and Chevrolet Camaro's to race alongside the under 3.5L cars such as the BMW 635CSi, Ford Capri's and the growing list of Mazda RX-7's. As the increasing national popularity of the ATCC, improvements in the ATCC telecast, and the 1991 economic recession all gradually reduced the grids until the series died after the 1993 season. The series was revived in 1997 and held at the ARDCs two circuits, Amaroo and Eastern Creek but with the major teams holding exclusivity to V8 Supercar events the mostly Sydney based privateers were not enough to make the series viable.

In the early years of the series several Sydney based drivers who regularly competed in the annual four round, three race per round series became household names through the national telecast on Channel 7. This was helped by most of the major ATCC teams at the time usually not competing in the series. Drivers such as Steve Masterton, Terry Shiel, Terry Finnigan and Mike Burgmann got national TV exposure they would otherwise have struggled to get had ATCC headline drivers like Peter Brock, Dick Johnson and Allan Moffat been regular competitors, although Johnson did race in some rounds in 1983 and 1984.

References