[Club racer]

A very interesting read this thread.

Have to say MP, your posts brought a smile to my face and a degree of admiration. Your resilience is laudable Petchy, but the reality - and let's face it REALITY is all that is actually counts - is that SuperTourers is a twitching corpse.

There will be seven cars this weekend - with Mitch on a one off appearance. No matter how much you polish it mate, six cars does not a successful series make! You know it, we know it, they know it.

There are many reasons for this. Financial costs are one as you said, but the management of the series has been dire, the treatment of the car owners mind-bogglingly bad and the business model fatally flawed from the outset.

More interesting to me is why the series has singularly failed to grab the attention of the masses, which I know was another worthy goal. Whilst the model - spec cars, evenly matched - was a worthy objective, the racing has been very dull indeed. It may float your boat, but it doesn't float the boat of even a minority of the fans that flock to Supercars. Good drivers for sure. BUT the cars are not exciting to watch, they are not noisy (The Protoype John De Veth drove in the demo sessions at the Festival sounded like a road car compared to most of the machinery on display...), they do not move around and passing is obviously difficult. They might be quick, but exciting they are not. And that matters Mark. Dale Mathers' Historic Muscle Car Trans Tasman Challenge at the Festival utterly blitzed every SuperTourer race I have seen (And I have seen most) for quantity, quality, noise, spectacle and racing. Fact I'm afraid. And those cars - as appreciating legitimate and accurate classics, arguably have more relevance in the market here in NZ that SuperTourers do. They certainly have more fans!

The bitter back biting and finger pointing amongst team owners in regard technical issues has also been as damaging as it was predictable with a bunch like that - but that in itself points squarely at poor management and poor leadership. Greg hasn't retired, he just got properly peed off with the way the series was run and the kindergarden squabbling that you all have to take some responsibility for. Its the same story for most of the team owners that have gone. They have just joined steady stream of fans and sponsors that have been dwindling since the very first round at Hampton Downs.

I quite like your ute series, and I like the V8 ute series, but they only run full time with SuperTourers because they can piggyback on the TV and buy it from them for $10k per round. Without that, I have no doubt neither series would run with them. Just about every class that has run with them on the support bill has been treated like dirt and that is why many have appeared only once or twice.

I have also read much comment over the past two years that TV3 would not cover boring racing with only a handful of cars. They say money talks, but I bet it's voice is becoming a bit annoying to the TV3 bods....eh?

Tell me, what chances would you give to a business that a) missed its target market, b) failed to create a new one c) let internal politics get utterly out of hand d) disenfranchised its own stakeholders and e) alienated potential and existing partners? Mark, you would give it 0 chance of survival and this is no different.

So am I pro NZV8s..? Nope. Not at all. Problems there are quite simple - not enough of them, no parity amongst themselves, no money to promote, a gun-ho arrogant attitude that rubs people up the wrong way (comes with the turf with these V8 types eh!!) and management that tells lie after lie until it starts believing them itself. I just feel sorry for some of the TL drivers - good blokes some of them, just racers like you and me.

For me - both series are as bad as the other and have been allowed to beat themselves and eachother to death with the help of dreadful management and zero governance from MSNZ. The whole of the sport has suffered (and is paying) and one can only hope everything SuperTourer and TLX disappears quietly off into the night very soon, along with the powers that be at MSNZ who have presided and contributed over three years to this sorry state of affairs.

Hope you can bully the new constitution through. That would be a good legacy to leave. But for me the quicker the V8 lot on both sides of the fence disappear, the better.

I didn't always feel like this either.....