Checking out the variety at the Hampton Downs Icebreaker

14 September, 2015

 

September’s an awkward month. It manages to be both deeply ingrained in the dreaded fruitlessness of the mid-year slog, but is still somehow close enough to December 25 for you to start stressing about what you’re getting mum for Christmas. But September is where you find the annual Historic Racing Classes (HRC) Icebreaker meeting at Hampton Downs Motorsport Park — an event that’s popular enough to distract anyone from the weight of a life buckled down with the month’s first-world problems. As an added bonus, it also acts as a yearly reminder that the upcoming circuit motorsport season is just around the corner.

Icebreaker is an event that’s firmly based in grass-roots motorsport, with the 2015 edition supported by 250 race cars of all shapes and sizes. The Historic Muscle Cars, Castrol BMW Race Series, and the Trofeo Series for Alfa Romeos were among the classes represented. Entries ranged from cars scraped together on a shoestring, to cars that would fit in at any endurance event in Australasia; big thumping V8s, to light Japanese coupés, to open wheelers.

It’s also a very relaxing place to be. There are no engineers sprinting up and down pit lane, or promo girls trying to sell things to the innocent — it’s all quite peaceful, apart from the noises echoing from the track of course. Everyone’s open, friendly, and chatty. Not to say that you can’t find friendliness at a tier-one meeting of course, but it’s just not quite the same.

Sadly I didn’t hang around for long, but I did hover for long enough to catch a couple of races — including the final BMW open race, which still held a huge amount of variety despite being relegated to cars of the Bavarian persuasion. At the front was Andrew Nugent’s BMW M3 E92, coming close to resembling a DTM racer, but with a far nastier sounding bark emanating from its exhausts. Behind him duelled the pair of Gull-sponsored 3 Series campaigned by Andre and Warwick Mortimer, as well as Robert Berggren’s well-presented wide-body M3 GTR replica.

While the racing at the front of the field was pretty clear-cut, the mid-order dicing was anything but. Justin Daly’s E30 330i had a great scrap with the E46 of Treva Smith, while a similarly entertaining battle between the E30 Fina Group A replica of Ash Razmi and Dave Lawrence’s 3 Series Compact — a platform traditionally unloved by motor racing circles — didn’t get resolved until the final lap, with the Compact eventually taking the position.

It feels weird to say, but the racing and the competition take a back seat at an event like Icebreaker — at least for me. It’s the kind of event best enjoyed by roaming parc fermé and pit lane, soaking in the sounds and the people. Bring on October!

Grand Routier — in the french tradition

Sitting in Paddy and Patsy Williams’ Dunedin garage is a stunning example of one of these rare French grand routier sedans. It is a 1949 four-door Lago-Record Factory Berline sedan, to give its full name. Daughter Cath let us know how proud she was of her dad, who had been tinkering away in his garage on this car for so many years.
Without exaggeration, it has been a mammoth task. I first saw this Talbot-Lago in mid 2019. The long-nosed, sweeping, curved four-door saloon, clothed in its misty green metallic paint, was quite breathtaking. There’s more than a little English influence in it, too, harking back to company owner Tony Lago’s involvement in the Clement-Talbot-Darracq era. The long front wings and bonnet, usually multi-louvred, highlighted with artful touches of chrome bling, are typical of the era, but these were indeed luxury length. Interiors provided leather-clad, armchair-style seating and ample legroom, with touches of wood and surprising details such as dainty childproof interior locks — a far cry from today’s lozenge boxes.
Paddy, a retired civil and structural engineer, knows his way around a lathe. He has a well-equipped garage-workshop to assist in any machining tasks along with his other passion for restoring classic motorcycles.

The Great River Road

A few years ago my family, knowing my fondness for driving, gave me the book Unforgettable Road Trips: Thirty-Six Drives of a Lifetime by Martin Derrick. Most of the road trips listed take less than a day in places like Scotland, Monaco, and Australia, plus one in New Zealand. Most of these places were too far to go just for a short drive but four of them would take several days. My interest was piqued, and those four drives were added to the bucket list. To date, I have done three of them: ‘Route 66’ (USA 21 days), ‘State Highway 6’ (NZ 10 days) and ‘The Great River Road’ (USA 22 days). You can drive all of them in less time, but you could also fly over them. We wanted a decent immersion in their charms.
The great river referred to is the Mississippi. While the name conjures the deep south, the river actually starts at the bottom of the great lakes, before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico about 3800km later. The great road is more of a concept than a specific strip of tarmac, as you can drive down either side of the river on various routes. Regardless of which side you drive, time should be kept aside for detours to places such as Nashville, which is famous for something or other.