FEATURE: TAILEM BEND – THE RACE TO BUILD A RACETRACK

In what was sleepy Tailem Bend a new racetrack has emerged

IT’S NOT often that a man on a bicycle sets an outright lap record on a motor racing circuit.

But if that has to happen, it might as well be Stuart O’Grady that does it. The Olympic gold medalist is also the Race Director for Revolv24, which will be the inaugural event at Australia’s newest motorsport park, The Bend Motorsport Park, Tailem Bend.

Prior to the first competitive event at the new venue, O’Grady lapped the track in 10m25s last week, prior to the bicycle racing event opening the track on January 13-14.

South Australia has a long history of motorsport and that looks set to continue into the future. If you go back to 1937 SA hosted the first Australian Grand Prix to take place away from the event’s place of birth, Phillip Island.

Two years after the Victor Harbour AGP it was at Lobethal, then Nuriootpa (1950), Port Wakefield (1955) and then at the new Mallala track, north of Adelaide, in 1961.

It was 1985 when it returned to the state – on a street circuit between Kent Town and the parklands in Adelaide, where it stayed for 11 years.

The GP may never return to SA again – certainly, not as a Formula 1 event. But there will be a lot of racing in the state with the opening of The Bend Motorsport Park.

The new circuit, which is about an hour’s drive from Adelaide, is set to shake up the sport when it opens next month, with a bicycle racing event.

Alongside an investment of $10.5m from the SA government and $7.5m from Canberra, the Shahin family’s Peregrine Corporation broke ground on the venue a year ago, and work has been constant ever since. With a total cost exceeding $100m the venue will start its motor racing activities in April, when the Shannons’ Nationals visit.

SA Premier Jay Wetherill spoke with great enthusiasm when the Supercars event was confirmed.

“It represents international excellence and that’s the whole idea behind this development, a first-class, international-class facility chasing first-class, international-class events to attract international visitors to South Australia,” he said.

“That’s the vision for this site and it’s being delivered upon from what we see in front of us today.

“The attention to detail that Dr Sam Shahin has outlined for this project has been extraordinary. Taking the very best from what they have seen around the world and are applying it at this place, but there are features of this development that I see nowhere in the world, that is accommodation, suites right on pit straight that is something you won’t see anywhere in the world and it is an incredible selling point.”

The track has been configured to deliver a variety of layouts. The longest is the GT Circuit, at 7.77km; the International Circuit, on which the Supercars will race in late August, will be 4.95km, while there are two variants of the West Circuit, one at 3.41km and one slightly longer, the West Plus.

The East Circuit can be used independently of the West layout, with its own pit facilities, and measures 3.93km. There will also be an Australian-first purpose-built drift track and karting facility and, in time, a rallysprint track, a rally school and a dragway on the 680-hectare site, which was Mitsubishi Australia’s test track in another life.

And that is something of a dichotomy. Tailem Bend was a great place to put a test track because Mitsubishi could beat the living daylights out of its locally-developed cars because it was, in the words of one engineer in the day, ‘not even in the middle of nowhere’. The last thing you wanted when you were fine-tuning the suspension of such thoroughbreds as the 380 GT was someone peering over the fence at your company’s latest and greatest (I am using that term advisedly…)

For spectators to come to a racetrack, you want the reverse of that – somewhere easily accessible, to move as many as 50,000 fans in and out of the venue.

To assist with that process hotel and resort giant Rydges recently announced it will open a new four-star hotel adjacent to the track. The company, which already operates the Rydges Bathurst on Conrod Straight, has started work on the Rydges Pit Lane Hotel, which will offer 100 rooms of varying sizes and standards.

Along with that there will be other accommodation that will have room for up to 10,000 people, with on-site accommodation of varying levels and cost, including campsites.

[And it is possibly worth mentioning at this point that the newest venue on the Supercars calendar, in Newcastle, featured a Media Centre that was upstairs in a pub. SA, you are not going to let NSW lead the way with that sort of thing for long, are you?]

Nearly 200 people worked on the site from the beginning and as many as 300 have been labouring to build the track itself, the pitlane and the buildings any racetrack needs.

The man driving the project has been Sam Shahin, self-confessed car nut, Carrera Cup Australia competitor and the man behind the Shahin family’s growing On The Run chain of service stations and convenience stores. The Peregrine Corporation now has more than 100 outlets in SA and an annual turnover in excess of $2bn.

“I am just very excited at the prospect of this world class facility bringing South Australia a little closer to hosting top tier national and international events,” said ‘Dr Sam’.

“This is a facility of a very high standard and it is built with that ambition of holding international standard events in South Australia.

We can’t wait for the tarmac to be laid very, very soon, it starts in three-four weeks’ time. This place will look very different in eight weeks from now, we have an international event pencilled in for January [Evolve24 bike race] and racing will commence in late March-early April next year.

“Everyone working on this project has been more than willing to lift the bar to bring this project to fruition on time and we couldn’t be prouder. We are extraordinarily proud with the association and support from the South Australian Government to trust the vision from many years ago that this just wasn’t a good idea. This is a real project. It has room in the landscape of motorsport in Australia and hopefully, it will build on the great level of participation in motorsport, not just in Australia, but in South Australia.”

He added that apart from the Shannons and Supercars events, an international GT event is “very likely”.

There will be a lot to see at the track, which has taken a few turns during its development phase.

Paul Trengrove, who has overseen much of the development for the Peregrine Corporation, told AA that there was one design that was under development that was virtually thrown away.

“It has taken us about two and a half years to get to this point,” he said.

“We came up with the design, but as we looked at it more closely, we realised that it would require too much tree culling, and there was not enough elevation change to make the best circuit that we could. So we started again.

“We chose a completely different location on the sight, with a focus on making the best venue, to provide the best racing and the most overtaking opportunities. The design work was done internally but we have been able to bring in people from different areas of the sport – car racing, Supercars, motorcycle racing – and get their input.”

The result is an FIA Grade 2 International circuit and a state-level circuit with fast flowing sections, technical corners and as much as 85m of elevation change within the complex.

On the main straight is an impressive pit building and pitlane. The 32 garages, each measuring 12m by 6m, will be allocated on a single basis for major meeting (ie, one Supercar per garage in August) but have the capacity to be ‘split’ for smaller events, to accommodate two cars at smaller and state-level meetings.

Around the venue activities will be monitored by 30 CCTV cameras, which are connected to the track’s communications systems. These, along with a state-of-the-art Safety Lights system, will allow the circuits to operate with a lower number of trackside officials and flaggies that would otherwise be the case.

Above the pit garages will be race control offices, a Function room and corporate suites, and that complex will be connected to the Rydges Hotel.

Away from the pit straight there garages and carports for support categories.

Oh yes… Optus has already been on-site and installed a large mobile phone tower earlier this year – and Telstra has work underway to install its own communication apparatus. At the time of writing the circuit management was uncertain what Vodafone has in place.

But they were confident – well, as confident as anyone can be – that the National Broadband Network would be operational by the time the circuit starts operations in earnest.

So what does it mean for the sport – particularly in SA?

Tim Slade grew up in the state and is looking forward to another event in his home state.

“It’s great that there is another track opening, in general, for the sport,” he said.

“From my perspective, being from SA, it’s terrific. The Shahin family have spared no expense, so I am sure that it is going to be a world-class facility.

“My first thought was a selfish one – it will cool for me to drive around it, and it’s a good addition to the Supercars championship. There has not been really a great event, apart from the Adelaide 500, and I think it can inspire younger competitors to want to get into the sport, and compete at a high level.”

Building a new circuit, from the ground up, is a big commitment. The potential is that The Bend will be a major boost to the sport, and time is ticking. A week after the Shannons round, the Asian Road Racing championship will arrive, with more than 100 competitors. And after the Supercars, the Rotax Pro Tour will take to the new karting facility to determine its champions.

In a world in which talking about new tracks is common, building one, to a high standard, is much less so. There’s still a lot of work to be done before O’Grady’s lap record is reset – probably numerous times…

By PHIL BRANAGAN

Article originally published in Issue 1725 of Auto Action.

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