Restrictions on the sizes of gatherings have brought the cancellation of the Speed Works Events finale at Hampton Downs this weekend.
Both the Toyota 86 Championship and the V8 Utes Championships were due to finish their seasons and crown their champions at the three-day meeting.
But Speed Works’ Geoff Short said while Aucklanders can now travel outside the city, limiting gatherings to a maximum of 10 people made the meeting impractical.
“Unfortunately, with a number of competitors and officials coming from the Auckland region for this meeting, we felt it was impractical to go ahead and potentially compromise the detailed safety plan we had put in place for the meeting,” Short said.
The ‘Motorsport Back on Track’ event would have been the first major motorsport meeting to take place since the alert level 2 restrictions were re-introduced outside of Auckland.
The meeting was due to run under strict safety protocols and without spectators, having been given the go ahead by Sport New Zealand. That followed a significant amount of work and collaboration by Motorsport New Zealand, acting MSNZ CEO Elton Goonan, Speed Works and Hampton Downs to deliver a workable safety plan that Sport NZ were happy to sign off, an announcement said.
Organisers and category officials are now looking at the feasibility of running the RYCO 24•7 V8 Utes Championship decider and the non-championship Best Bars Toyota 86 Championship classes at the forthcoming North Island Endurance Championship event at Hampton Downs, which is scheduled for September 18-19 under the same safety plan.
