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Amaroo Park Raceway

Location	Annangrove, New South Wales
Coordinates	33°39′3″S150°56′1″E / 33.65083°S 150.93361°E /-33.65083; 150.93361
Owner	Oscar Glaser
Opened	12 March 1967; 58 years ago (1967-03-12) Reopened: 31 May 1970; 55 years ago (1970-05-31)
Closed	Closed 1st time: Mid-1968 Closed 2nd time: 23 August 1998; 27 years ago (1998-08-23)
Major events	Australian Super Touring Championship (1996–1997) Australian Touring Car Championship (1974–1978, 1985–1994) Sun-7 Chesterfield Series (1971–1981) Castrol 6 Hour (1970–1987) Amaroo Park 300 (1980–1987)
Full Circuit (1967–1998)
Length	1.930 km (1.199 mi)
Turns	10
Race lap record	0:44.36 (John Bowe,Veskanda C1,1987,Group A Sports Cars)

Amaroo Park Raceway was a 1.930 km (1.199 mi)motor racing circuit located inAnnangrove, New South Wales, in the present-day north-western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Opened in 1967, the road circuit served as a venue for a variety of competitions including theCastrol 6 Hour motorcycle race, rounds of theAustralian Touring Car Championship,Australian Drivers' Championship,Australian Formula Ford Championship,Australian Sports Sedan Championship, the AMSCAR Series for touring cars, historic racing and others. The last Australian Touring Car Championship round to take place at the circuit was in 1994.

From 1970, Amaroo Park was run and promoted by the Australian Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) who also promoted theMount Panorama Circuit inBathurst, and later were the promoters of Sydney'sEastern Creek Raceway.

The ARDC lost money promoting the Super Touring Bathurst 1000 from 1997 to 1999 and this circuit was sold to recover some of the loss.

Amaroo Park was built by Industrialist Oscar Glaser as part of a plan to build a full motorsport complex.^[1] This began with a hillclimb track, as well as a dirt short track, amotocross track, a little usedspeedway track, and finally the main (relatively short) 1.8 km bitumen track. A full length Grand Prix circuit was planned but never built.^[1][2] The name Amaroo comes from the Aboriginal word meaningbeautiful place.^[2]

The first motorcycle meeting was held on 26 February with a 30 lap production race won by Larry Simons on aBSA Mk.ll Spitfire in heavy rain.^[2]

The official opening meeting, promoted by the Amaroo Sporting Country Club, was held on 12 March 1967 with attendance restricted to members of several motoring clubs, around 1000 spectators visiting. The first event open to the general public was held on 9 April. More events followed, however poor spectator attendances blamed in part on poor facilities lead to the temporary closure of the circuit in mid 1968.^[1]

The circuit reopened on 31 May 1970 with much improved spectator facilities and racing now run by the ARDC,^[1] with the first of the motorcycle endurance races which came to be known as the Castrol Six Hour run by the Willoughby District Motorcycle Club later that year.^[2]

Amaroo Park held its own touring car series from 1971 to 1993, initially as theSun-7 Chesterfield Series and then under various names, including the "AMSCAR Series" from 1982.

The complex had ahillclimb, amotocross track, a little usedspeedway track and a short circuit track.

The circuit closed forever after the last meeting was held there on 23 August 1998. The meeting was billed as the "Goodbye Amaroo State open Meeting" with a mix of classes includingSports Sedans,HQ's and Group N Historic Touring Cars. The final race held at Amaroo Park was a "Butchers Picnic" which included the top 3 cars from the competing classes all in one final race. The race was run as a Butchers Picnic as a salute to the very first meetings at the circuit where the first races run were indeed Butchers' Picnics. The race, called "The Last Race, The Main Event, Amaroo's Final Fling" started at 4:30 pm and was held over 10 laps. It was won by Sydney driver Ray Lintott driving a 4WD, twin-turboPorsche 911 Turbo with a race time of 9:16.4942. The final driver, Andrew Papadopoulos driving anAlfa Romeo GTV, crossed the line at 4:40 pm bringing the curtain down on one of Australia's most popular race circuits after over 31 years of continuous operation.^[3][4] The ARDC also let Arthur Hayes, their No. 1 member (meaning he was card holder #1) wave the chequered flag for the race.

Amaroo Park started on the short pit straight, and from there the track had a kink to the right up towards Bitupave Hill. The track then turned left and dropped down into the right hand Dunlop Loop and onto the back straight which again kinked to the right and led into the tight left hander at Honda Corner. Prior to 1983, Honda Corner had no runoff on the inside of the track and was earth banking surrounded by a concrete wall. After the turn at Honda, there was another short right hand kink leading up to the tight right hand Stop Corner (sometimes called the Lake Corner). From there it was a short straight up to Wunderlich Corner, with the pit entry on the outside of the turn. Known as Wunderlich for sponsorship reasons, the turn was known during the 1970s as Ron Hodgson Corner due to sponsorship from Sydney's then largestHolden dealer, was the final turn on the circuit and led back onto the pit straight.

At the fastest part of the circuit, the run up to Bitupave Hill, the faster cars (Sports Sedans,Sports Cars and F5000) were able to reach just over 220 km/h (137 mph). Dunlop Loop, Honda and the Stop Corner were generally regarded as the best passing spots on the track.

During the late 1980s in order to slow down the motorbikes through the final turn which with zero runoff was seen as too dangerous, a small chicane was built into the inside of the corner.

At its closing the outright lap record for the 1.94 km circuit was 0:44.36, set byJohn Bowe in 1987 driving a5.8L Chevrolet poweredVeskanda C1sports car.

Amaroo Park first held a round of theAustralian Touring Car Championship when it hosted Round 4 of the1974 Australian Touring Car Championship. The race was won byPeter Brock driving aHolden Dealer TeamHolden LJ Torana GTR XU-1. The circuit would go on to host 15 rounds of the championship between 1974 and its last ATCC round in 1994. The last race was won byMark Skaife driving hisGibson MotorsportHolden VP Commodore givingHolden the bookends on Amaroo Park's participation in the ATCC.

One of the features of Amaroo Park's history has been the AMSCAR Series for touring cars, created by Amaroo's promoters, the Australian Racing Drivers Club and staged annually from 1982 to 1993. Popular with spectators and easy for Sydney'sChannel 7 to telecast, it became the backbone of the Sydney touring car scene, a scene which once consisted mostly of privateers who have largely disappeared since Amaroo closed, with the major touring car teams now operating fromMelbourne and south-eastQueensland. On many occasions these events featured larger grid numbers than did the rounds of the national levelAustralian Touring Car Championship. This was mostly as the large number of Sydney privateers who usually filled the grid in the nationally televised (by Ch.7)Bathurst 1000, rarely raced outside of NSW or Queensland due to limited budgets.

The AMSCAR Series had its origins in Amaroo's ownSun-7 Chesterfield Series for touring cars, first held in 1971 and was won by Sydney's Lakis Manticas driving aMorris Cooper S. This would continue, under various names relating to series sponsorship, through to 1981. It was only from the beginning of the "Group A" category in Australia in1985 that the headline teams started appearing in the series on a more regular basis, with part of the reason being that as Group A was new to Australia in 1985, the AMSCAR Series gave teams valuable testing under race conditions (also because from 1985 Amaroo would hold an annual round of the ATCC).

Frank Gardner's JPS Team BMW and its drivers Jim Richards andTony Longhurst dominated from 1985 to 1987 (Richards in the 635 CSi was unbeaten at Amaroo in 1985 winning all 12 AMSCAR races, the ATCC round and theEndurance Championship race), whileGibson Motorsport, first with Nissan and later withHolden, also contested the series in the later years of Group A and into the new5.0L V8 formula introduced in1993, with Jim Richards winning in the team'sNissan Skyline GT-R in 1992 whileMark Skaife won for Gibson driving aHolden VP Commodore in 1993. Other top line teams to contest the AMSCAR series after the switch to Group A were Peter Brock's Holden Dealer Team (later known as Mobil 1 Racing), Dick Johnson Racing, 1988 series winnerColin Bond'sCaltex CXT Racing Team, Tony Longhurst'sBenson & Hedges team (evolved from JPS Team BMW), as well asRobbie Francevic's Volvo team.

The increasing national popularity of the Australian Touring Car Championship, improvements in Channel 7's ATCC telecast, and the 1991 economic recession which saw a number of privateer teams only racing in the two ATCC rounds in Sydney and the Bathurst 1000, all gradually reduced the grids until the AMSCAR Series was discontinued after the 1993 season. It was revived in 1997 and held at the ARDC's two circuits, Amaroo Park and Eastern Creek, but with the major teams holding exclusivity to V8 Supercar events, the mostly Sydney-based privateers were not numerous enough to make the series viable and the series folded after 1997.

Between 1980 and 1987, Amaroo Park ran what was usually the second endurance race of the touring car season (theAdelaide International Raceway endurance race usually preceded it by two weeks), though it was not until1983 that it became a round of theAustralian Endurance Championship.

The races were held over 155 laps of the 1.94 km (1.20 mi) circuit for a total of 300.7 km (186 mi). The 1984 Silastic 300 was the only race held under wet conditions. The final race in 1987 was known as the Hardie Irrigation 100 due to the distance being shortened to 100 laps rather than the usual 155.

Rounds of various Australian motor racing championship were held at the circuit.

* Amaroo hosted two rounds of the1989 Australian Drivers' Championship (both held on the same day).Neil Crompton won Round 7 andSimon Kane won Round 8.

For almost 10 years,Kevin Bartlett held Amaroo Park's outright lap record of 46.2 set in hisLolaFormula 5000. This was broken on 26 May 1985 by reigningAustralian Drivers' ChampionJohn Bowe who recorded a 44.60 lap during the second round of the1985 Australian Drivers' Championship, a race that Bartlett was actually doing television commentary on forChannel 7. Bowe himself then broke his own track record just under two years later when he recorded a lap of 44.36 in hisChevrolet poweredVeskanda C1 during the second round of the1987 Australian Sports Car Championship. That lap would stand as the lap record until the circuits closure in 1997.

The official fastest race lap records at the Amaroo Park are listed as:

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