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New Zealand’s Grand Prix hits Manfeild Circuit

7 February, 2017

Featuring one of the busiest, and arguably best, schedules in recent years, the 62nd New Zealand Grand Prix will take place over the weekend of February 10–12 at the newly renamed Manfeild Circuit Chris Amon facility.

The increasingly popular Castrol Toyota Racing Series will once again conclude a stellar season, with the final race of the series’ five-consecutive weekend, five-circuit, fifteen-race schedule taking place at the Grand Prix, kicking off at 3.30pm on Sunday — that’s a full-on ‘year’ of racing if we’ve ever seen one. 

This is, of course, the first Grand Prix event of the 2017 calendar, and continues the tradition of New Zealand being one of only two countries worldwide permitted to use the phrase ‘Grand Prix’ for its premier single-seater racing outside Formula One.

We also benefit from the difference in seasons between hemispheres, being that our series runs in New Zealand’s summer months, which is the ‘off season’ for our northern hemisphere brothers. This means that some of the best young drivers in the world flock to our shores to compete in the Castrol Toyota Racing Series in the hopes of sharpening their skills — and perhaps an endless summer holiday — while attracting lucrative attention from manufacturers and other major teams.

One of three Formula One teams represented at the upcoming event — Ferrari — are here in the form of their current academy driver, Kiwi Marcus Armstrong. Red Bull Racing are also represented by their latest up-and-comer Richard Verschoor, while Sahara Force India is campaigning Jehan Daruvala — a youngster who caught the team’s eye after winning a racing competition in India called ‘One In a Billion’.

Alongside the three is a line-up of 17 other ‘who’s who’ of racing, including Australian Thomas Randle, who has shown blinding pace in recent races. He heads to the Grand Prix meeting vying for the title with Red Bull’s Vershoor.

A line-up like that needs a strong supporting cast, and this year won’t let you down — the BNT New Zealand Touring Cars have produced some stunning races, with former Bathurst winner Jason Bargwanna and his Richards Toyota Camry breaking the stranglehold of champion Simon Evans in the SMEG Holden in spectacular style in the two recent South Island rounds. The Toyota 86 Championship, ENZED Central Muscle Cars, Tradezone GTRNZ, Portergroup V8 Utes, Pirelli Porsche, and Formula 1600 will also duke it out over the weekend.

With testing on Friday, two qualifying sessions and a race on Saturday, then a Sunday-morning race as a build-up to the main event on Sunday afternoon, it’s going to be a full-on weekend!

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.