In 1970 New Zealand’s Bruce McLaren died in an accident at Goodwood, UK, while testing his latest Can-Am sports racing car in preparation for the 1970 Can-Am series of races to be held in USA and Canada. Forty years later, to mark the significant contribution made by Bruce to international motor sport, the 
Tasman Revival Series 2010 will feature the Bruce McLaren Festival.
Strong interest in the has meant the event promoters, the Historic Racing Club (HRC), have now expanded the Tasman Revival Series 2010 to extend Classic and Historic racing over four consecutive weekends in January and February, 2010. The Tasman Revival series has been run annually in New Zealand since 2003 by the HRC.
The Tasman Revival Series in 2010 will commence with the ‘Tasman Revival 2010 – Hampton Downs Classic’ to be held on the brand new Hampton Downs Motorsport Park race track over the weekend of January 16-17, 2010.
The next two weekends will see the staging of the ‘Bruce McLaren Festival’. The Festival will be a tribute to the late Bruce McLaren (www.bruce-mclaren.com).
The first weekend of the Bruce McLaren Festival will be run at the Hampton Downs motor racing track from January 22-24, 2010.
The second weekend of the Festival will be held one week later at Pukekohe Park raceway from January 29-31, 2010. The historic Pukekohe track, first opened for racing in 1963, is the very track on which Bruce McLaren won the 1964 New Zealand International Grand Prix driving a Cooper T70 Climax racing car. The car that Bruce used in 1964 is currently nearing the end of a 5 year restoration project undertaken by Australian owner Adam Berryman.
The fourth weekend of the Series will see the ‘Tasman Revival 2010- Taupo Classic’ race meeting at Taupo Motorsports Park from February 6-7, 2010.
Even at this early date, nearly 30 McLaren race car owners have expressed their intention to be part of the Bruce McLaren Festival. In addition to McLaren owners, early registrations of interest indicate there will be three historic Cooper racing cars and one BRM racing car that have all been personally driven by Bruce.
A premier class of the Bruce McLaren Festival will be for Formula 5000 (F5000) and Historic Formula One (F1) cars. Already, registrations of interest have been received from 45 racing car owners, including those of 10 McLaren F5000 and pre 1978 F1 cars.
There are 19 Can-Am cars registered for the ‘Can-Am’ sports racing class of the Festival, 15 of which are McLaren Can-Am cars. The McLarens range from the early 1964/5 M1A Can-Am cars up to the big 8800cc 1972 McLaren M8Fs. The other two cars in the Can-Am class are the unique McRae GM9 and a Matich SR3.
In the ‘Tasman Series’ class of 1960s racing cars there are already 41 cars registered of which 4 are McLaren M4 F2 cars. Also registered is Graham Adelman’s 1967 BRM P126 V12 – the very car that Bruce McLaren drove in the New Zealand legs of the 1968 Tasman Series. Bruce raced this BRM at Pukekohe, Levin, Wigram and Teretonga – where he won the feature race in this car.
In the ‘Super Historic’ class of single seater cars, there are registrations of interest from owners of 42 cars. Cars in this class include 1970/80s Formula Pacific/Atlantics, F2 and F3 cars.
In the ‘Formula Junior and Invited F3’ class, there are already 50 cars registered.
In a ‘first’ for Historic racing in Auckland, New Zealand there will be a dedicated class for ‘Historic 1930s/40s/50s Racing and Sports Racing Cars’. Some of New Zealand’s early historic race cars including the Lycoming Special, Edelbrock Special and Stanton Corvette will be joined by those from USA (Cooper BobTail), Australia (Maybach Special) and UK (ERA R4D and Coopers).
The ‘Invited 1960s Saloons’ class will feature a range of cars typically seen on NZ racetracks in the 1960s including Jaguars, Anglias, Minis, Cortinas, Escorts plus other makes and some ‘allcomer’ specials. The ex Kerry Grant A40, the ex Clyde Collins A40 ‘Fordina’ and the ex Warner Collins ‘Fowog’ will be just some of the former saloon specials that will be back on the track.
Of the Festival registrations held so far, 140 are ‘internationals’ including 88 from Australia, 34 from UK, 1 from Germany, 1 from the Netherlands, 1 from Spain, 13 from USA, 1 from Canada and 1 from Macau.
For more information, visit www.tasmanrevivalseries.com and www.grandprix.org.nz.
[Source: Historic Racing Club]
