Adelaide International Raceway
| AIR | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Port Wakefield Rd, Virginia, South Australia |
| Coordinates | 34°41′57″S 138°33′53″E / 34.69917°S 138.56472°ECoordinates: 34°41′57″S 138°33′53″E / 34.69917°S 138.56472°E |
| Owner | Bob Jane Corporation |
| Operator | Australian Motorsport Club Limited |
| Broke ground | 1970 |
| Opened | 9 January 1972 |
| Closed | 2006 |
| Major events | ATCC Tasman Series Rothmans International Series ANDRA Australian NASCAR Championship Australian AUSCAR Championship |
| Full Circuit | |
| Surface | Asphalt |
| Length | 2.41 km (1.50 mi) |
| Turns | 8 |
| Banking | 7° (turn 9), 5° (turn 8) |
| Lap record | 0:49.5 (Alan Jones, Lola T332-Chevrolet, 1977, Formula 5000) |
| Short Circuit | |
| Length | 1.77 km (1.10 mi) |
| Turns | 6 |
| Banking | 7° (turn 6), 5° (turn 5) |
| Speedway Superbowl | |
| Length | 0.800 km (0.497 mi) |
| Turns | 4 |
| Banking | 7° (turns 1-2), 5° (turns 3-4) |
The Adelaide International Raceway is a permanent circuit owned by Australian Motorsport Club Limited under the auspices of the Bob Jane Corporation. It is located on Port Wakefield Road at Virginia, a small town just north of Adelaide, South Australia, and is round the corner from Speedway City. AIR is owned by the Bob Jane Corporation and run by the Australian Motorsport Club Ltd.
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[edit] History
Adelaide International Raceway (AIR) was built by Surfers Paradise businessman Keith Williams who also owned the Surfers Paradise International Raceway and was opened in 1972. The race track can be used in four different configurations. The full circuit is 2.41 km, the short circuit is 1.77 km, the Speedway Superbowl is 0.8 km and the drag strip is 0.25-mile (0.40 km) long.[1] The track is dominated by its 915m long main straight which doubles as the drag strip and the 800m long Speedway Superbowl. Like most Australian circuits at its time of construction, AIR raced and still races clockwise. The only time the circuit was raced anti-clockwise was for speedway meetings in the mid-1970s and for major championship races such as NASCAR races in the 1990s.
Both the Speedway Superbowl and the Drag Strip have the capacity to run night meetings due to the lights that run around the Superbowl and down the circuits main straight. The spectator viewing areas extend from the final turn and all the way down the 900m long straight. There are also spectator mounds on the outside of Turn 9 (last turn of the road course and part of the Superbowl) and on the Superbowl's back straight.
AIR also has an unusual set up for the Pits. The pits for races are located on the inside of the track coming onto the main straight. The cars actually enter the track for a race through a gate on the outside of the track, again coming onto the main straight as the pits where the cars and crew are when not racing is located outside the main straight behind the officials tower and spectator mounds.
From 1972 to 1988 the Adelaide International Raceway was a major motor racing circuit regularly holding rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship and endurance races of the Australian Manufacturers' Championship (later known as the 'Championship of Makes'). The Adelaide track also hosted rounds of the famous Tasman Series.
Beginning in the early 1970s, paved short track speedway was becoming popular in Australia and with the Speedway Superbowl, Adelaide a ready made track. Compared to the ¼ mile paved tracks such as the now closed Liverpool Speedway in Sydney and Tralee Speedway in Canberra, the Superbowl was a ½ mile track and supremely fast with room on the 200m long straights for cars to reach high speeds. When racing Speedway's traditional anti-clockwise, turns 1 and 2 (turn 9 on the road course) is slightly banked (approximately 7°) while turns 3 and 4 is banked at 5°. This made turn 7 of the main road course slightly off-camber as cars entered the Bowl.
The Speedway Superbowl held winter race meetings and was first used on 16 June 1974 when a large crowd turned up to see competitors from Rowley Park Speedway drive on the new asphalt speedway. It quickly became apparent that cars built for a ¼ mile dirt track speedway were out of their depth on the ½ mile Superbowl with the Modified Rods (Sprintcars) reaching over 170 km/h on the straights when they were only used to about 80 km/h on dirt. Sedan driver Jim Curnow was knocked unconscious when his Holden Torana hit the concrete retaining wall and chronic Understeer was the biggest complaint of almost all drivers with cars generally being set up for dirt and not asphalt. Some sedan drivers then started building cars that were suited to racing on the Superbowl with a space frame chassis, well tuned V8 engines and wide slick tyres and these cars quickly dominated. The problem was that there were too few of them with some races only having five or six competitors. Most drivers eventually decided it was more fun racing on the dirt at Rowley Park and with crowd numbers dwindling due to both the tracks location (26 km north of the city) and the dwindling number of competitors, speedway meetings stopped being held after 1976.
In an ironic twist, when Rowley Park ceased operating after April 1979, Adelaide's new speedway venue Speedway Park (now called Speedway City) was opened adjacent to AIR in October 1979 the crowds returned despite the longer travel time to get there.
The fastest qualifying and race laps set during speedway meetings was set in 1976 by John Hughes (later the founder of World Series Sprintcars) driving a Holden 308 powered HJ Holden One Tonner ute chassis covered by HJ Monaro bodywork. His times were 23.8 for qualifying and 23.2 seconds race lap. Though they remain the speedway lap records they can't be counted as the Superbowl's outright lap records as both AUSCAR and NASCAR times in the mid-1990s were significantly faster.
AIR's Speedway Superbowl was also a regular and popular short track venue for AUSCAR and NASCAR racing during the 1990s with crowds of up to 15,000 attending the annual Adelaide round of the Australian Championships. The Superbowl was and still is the only race circuit still in operation other than the Calder Park Thunderdome where the race cars can run on a paved oval track in Australia. Both AIR with its Superbowl and Calder Park with its Thunderdome are owned by Australian motor racing legend turned multi-million dollar businessman Bob Jane.
The entire track has recently[when?] been resurfaced, restricting use even further with a possibility of events being held from late 2008.[2]
In 2006 the Australian Motor Racing Series held a round at AIR, but it appears to have been a "one-off" for the circuit, as no major circuit racing has been held there since.
The site had seen no drag racing since the late 1990s, with racing making a return in November 2011. This saw Top Doorslammers run the 1/8th mile track for the first time in over 10 years and gives hope for drag racing's future in South Australia.[3]
[edit] Touring Car round winners
Note: In both the 1976 and 1977 Australian Touring Car Championships there were two rounds held at Adelaide International Raceway. The earlier round was a 'sprint' event and later round was a 250 km endurance race. The endurance race was lengthened to 300 km in 1978 and became part of the "Australian Championship of Makes" until 1980 then becoming part of the Australian Endurance Championship until it was last won by Peter Brock in his Holden Dealer Team Commodore on 20 November 1983.
[edit] References
- ^ "Australian Racing Circuits". Motor Sport World. http://www.motorsportworld.com.au/venues/circuits.htm#Adelaide%20International.
- ^ "Important Notice – Adelaide". Fastrack Racing. http://www.fastrackracing.com.au/notice.php.
- ^ "Bray versus Bray in Adelaide". dragnews.com.au. http://www.dragnews.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1090:bray-versus-bray-adelaide&catid=35:pro-racer&Itemid=55.
[edit] External links
- Official site
- Circuit map
- Circuit info from motorsportworld.com.au
- Adelaide International Raceway in Google Maps
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