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Tony Quinn picks up Hampton Downs

3 June, 2015

It’s the start of a new chapter for Hampton Downs Motorsport Park, as it has recently been purchased by Highlands Motorsport Park owner and Australian pet food magnate Tony Quinn.

Hampton Downs opened in 2009, and Quinn has expressed an interest in purchasing the facility for a number of years — it was only after extensive negotiations that he was able to purchase, becoming Hampton Downs’ new owner on June 3.

Tony Quinn (R) purchases Hampton Downs Motorsport Park

For the first six months, Quinn will sit back and firm up his plans, but some plans are already in the works.

“A lot of what we want to do is pretty obvious, like finishing off the pit lane, extending the track, and building another skid pan down the bottom,” Quinn says. “By the end of the summer, maybe March–April next year [2016], a lot of those plans will be finished. Then I can see a grand opening of the track in November, 2016.”

Though nothing is set in stone as yet, it is thought that this grand opening may also play host to a New Zealand double-header finale to the Australian GT series. There is also speculation around an Asia-Pacific GT Cup at the event. Only time will tell, but it sure sounds as though Hampton Downs really will be stepping up to the international stage.

The writing on the wall

25 September, 2026

Deven, a digital content producer in his 20s, says it was the rear-drive Nissan and Toyota drift cars that fired his imagination in his not-so-distant youth and soon had him wanting one of his own. However, like most of us, he had to start in something less glamorous – in his case, a 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. After that, he bought a four-litre V8 1991 Toyota Soarer, a big change from the Mitsubishi.
“It was my daily driver, and it wasn’t that bad to run back when petrol was affordable,” he says.
When he got fed up with filling it up, Deven bought a 1989 Ford Laser sedan, a 1.3-litre five-speed manual, to be his daily driver. It’s in very good condition, bought from a careful older driver, and he still runs it – although he will occasionally also drive the latest in a series of Nissan Laurel sedans. His current one, from 1993, has done the lowest number of kilometres yet, at 183,000. It has the single-cam version of the engine in his Skyline.
“I’ve had four different versions of that car. It was just a car I always liked. It’s really comfortable, quite luxurious. I bought it from a 90-year-old in Hamilton. It’s in mint condition, and everything is standard.”

The actual Formula One

18 September, 2026

Seeing, in a shed in Hamilton, New Zealand, the Darracq 120 racer that Louis Wagner, also a pioneer aviator, drove to victory in the 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race felt a little like finding a Rembrandt at a garage sale.
For historical significance, I’d say this car ranks with Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp, the first Indianapolis 500 winner. Unlike Harroun’s Wasp, which has been lovingly cared for at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum over the years, this historically pivotal machine wound up half a world away from its home in France and, to most of the motoring world, largely forgotten. Sadly, so is the story of how the car got to Aotearoa in the first place.
More often than not, a racing car that is a few years old is regarded as obsolete and relegated to a shed somewhere. As far as racing drivers and team owners at the cutting edge of the sport are concerned, the cars are virtually worthless at that point. They can’t be driven on the street; at best they can be reconfigured for lower levels of the sport, so few people care about them until their historical significance becomes more apparent.