The Bend Motorsport Park — take the first hot lap of Australia’s newest racetrack
STRAP yourselves in and start your engines — we’re about to take you on the very first hot lap of SA’s new racetrack, The Bend Motorsport Park. See the driver’s view video with commentary from developer Dr Sam Shahin.
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THE brand new unmarked bitumen is like black glass, the pristine red and white apex ripple strips could be from a computer game driving simulator and the surrounding sandy soil can make it seem like this is all a mirage in the desert.
But as this exclusive video of the first lap of The Bend Motorsport Park shows, the moment is finally here for Australian motor racing fans.
One day they will know every corner, racing line and viewing point of Australia’s newest motor race circuit. But this video shows the first time even developer Dr Sam Shahin has driven the track, albeit at only 80km/h while the bitumen cures in time for a round of the Australian GT championship in April.
With barriers moved the night before this video was taken, Dr Shahin takes a moment and a deep breath at the start line.
“This may be the last time I’m in pole position at my age,’’ the 50-year-old Porsche driver (in his spare time) says as he prepares to sample the fruits of his obsession for the past decade.
“It is an experience just to walk it. I have to stop myself giggling with delight even when I walk around it.
“This is motorsport history being written, I have no doubt. But others now have to judge in the history of SA motorsport if we really have achieved something for our great state here on a national and world stage.’’
Dr Shahin has always maintained that Adelaideans will never really get the scale and concept of The Bend Motorsport Park until they experience it first-hand.
First Adelaide’s can’t-do culture said he couldn’t fund it — but he did. Then the naysayers said it wouldn’t be built — and it has been. Since then negative attention has determined that it won’t attract races — and it has, starting this weekend.
Ironically, history will record that it was a 24-hour cycling race that launched the new facility. Revolve24 will be held there on Saturday as part of the Tour Down Under.
But Dr Shahin is no less proud of poaching that race for the state.
“We were up again the might of the New South Wales Government to get that race so I’m pretty happy that is a win for SA,’’ he explains.
By the end of this year, The Bend will be well-established on the motor racing calendar. Most notably the million dollar luxury European cars from the GT championship event in April will announce the $110 million private venture, which has emerged a few kilometres from Tailem Bend with only $7 million of taxpayers’ money from some minor roadworks at the entry point.
The huge popularity of the Supercars series, adding to the long-established Adelaide 500 (formerly Clipsal 500) will bring the track to national petrolhead attention in August and Dr Shahin says watch this space for a MotoGP motorbike round in coming years.
The popular wisdom now is that the track is too far from Adelaide for the crowds to come.
But as this video shows, motorsport fans would be well rewarded by driving twice as far to get to this circuit.
Always in the background of your view around the track is the 400m long main building with a Rydges Hotel overlooking pit straight.
On its end, the building would be more than three times the height of Adelaide’s tallest tower, the Westpac building.
Some of the plans still seem far-fetched for the naysayers. So ostentatious is the development that in the foyer of the main building, international high-rollers will be able to test-drive a historic Le Mans or Formula One race car in the morning before buying the machine from the licensed dealer in the afternoon.
“Someone can bring their own supercar, stay in the hotel room above the pit it sleeps in and take it out in the morning,’’ Dr Shahin explains.
In world terms, the length of the track is the equivalent of an athletic marathon, at 7.779km one of the longest in the world.
But even the trimmings to this main circuit will outshine other Australian venues. These will include a drift track already heralded as the best in the world by racers, a 4WD park, 2km-long drag strip, go-kart track, camping ground and rally circuit.
A Shahin trademark On The Run service station is already doing brisk business at the entrance to the venue.
The folk of Tailem Bend are still coming to terms with the 400 townhouses which will appear on the site — 40 in stage one — in which mainly international high-rollers will have room for a man-cave on the ground floor for their million-dollar beast.