Quote:
Originally Posted by Sheep Stations
What a lot of cynical tripe. You can the event for low crowd attendance as if it's the be-all-end-all and substitute it with a suggested format of vehicle inclusion so boring and lacking any motorsport interest as to be a fail-safe cure for insomnia? Very original I guess...
Track hire, full restaurants, catering, accomodation, transport, contract work etc etc...I think Bathurst and its council do very nicely out of the 12 hour thanks very much.
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This post (and other recent ones like it) show that some motorsport enthusiasts have no grasp of the commercial realities – and political realities in the case of races held on public road courses like Mount Panorama – of major events like the Bathurst 12-Hour.
A 'headline' event must attract significant public interest (ie. a decent raceday crowd and 'live' free-to-air TV coverage) to survive more than a few years.
No business worth the name will fork out thousands of sponsorship dollars for a race that's watched by just a few hundred paying spectators, several thousand online streaming viewers (many of whom probably don’t live in the sponsors' target market locations), and maybe 10-20,000 viewers of the delayed TV highlights package.
I understand, from a reliable source, that most of the 'sponsorship' of at least one Bathurst 12-Hour outright contender comprised contra deals and favours for the car owner's business suppliers. Hardly a dollar changed hands.
Race promoters need lots of 'bums on seats' to pay the considerable expenses involved in running the event and to show sponsors that their expensive signs are being seen by many potential customers – not just farm animals.
Local business income from teams, officials and other race visitors aren't enough for the Bathurst Council, which has the final say on the events held at Mount Panorama, to justify the noise and inconvenience to its constituents.
As for the bad weather affecting this year's spectator attendance, the race – like the other recent Bathurst production touring car enduros – has never drawn a decent crowd even in fine weather.
If people are interested in an event they'll come - rain, hail or shine.
There have been plenty of well-attended motor racing meetings held in appalling weather. The 1969 Calder one-hour production touring car race (in which Bob Jane in an 'uncompetitive' Monaro 350 fitted with Kleber road tyres splashed to victory over Alan Moffat's factory Falcon GT) and the 1974 Hardie-Ferodo 1000 (in which 'co-driver' Kevin Bartlett made John Goss look much better than he was) spring to mind.
History lesson:
The high-end imported cars that competed in the early Armstrong/Gallagher 500s at Phillip Island/Bathurst spelt the demise of those races as true 'showroom showdowns' for average car-buyers.
'Bathurst specials' took over until the 1972 'Supercar' controversy, which effectively killed Series Production Touring Car racing for almost 20 years.
The 1980s Production Touring Car rules, which permitted sporty cars like the Mazda RX7 and Commore VL turbo, never attracted a worthwhile public following.
It wasn't until the 1990 Production Touring Car formula, which was designed around 6-cylinder Commodores and Falcons, that real 'Series Production' touring car racing reappeared. It had the right ingredients but never took off because the promotion was left to CAMS, which like any government wouldn't know a good marketing concept if it jumped up and bit it on the bum.
If CAMS had restricted the category to mass-produced base models all along it would have kept its credibility with the car-buying public - and probably still be around today. But, racing drivers being racing drivers, they just couldn't leave well enough alone.
Production touring car racing must have classes, but they should be based on the car industry's recognised size-based categories (ie. light, small, medium and large) and not purchase prices. Car buyers tend to consider size before price.
The fact remains that races dominated by Porsches, Audis, BMWs, Evos and the like have never been – and will never be – popular with Australian motorsport fans. Group A and Super Touring both flopped for that very reason.
There's room for a 'high-performance' production touring car category, but it should be for mass-produced variants (eg. like turbo 6-cylinder or V8 XT Falcons, and Commodore SS V8), not tiny-volume ones like Evos, Stis and 335is. These cars should race separately from the base models because they appeal to a different market.
Motorsport has a place for limited edition semi-exotic production touring cars. It’s called club racing.
If the Bathurst 12-Hour continues to allow high-performance cars to compete then history will repeat itself - maybe not next year, but within a couple of years at the most. The promoters are dreaming if they think the race will ever be popular in its current format.