MOTORSPORT: Formula 5000 world champion – at 73

Formula 5000's heyday was the 1970s, but it has made a huge comeback as an historic category since the turn of the century – and it seems to have given Kenny Smith eternal racing life.

New Zealander Smith is 73 and won all six F5000 races at his country's annual Festival of Motor Racing at Hampton Downs – between Auckland and Hamilton – the past two weekends.

The races, also part of the Tasman Cup Revival Series, were branded F5000's "World Series", with drivers mainly from NZ, Australia and Europe. While Smith's clean sweep kind of makes him a world champion, there is another strong F5000 contingent in America doing its own thing.

The drivers Smith races against now are not of the calibre of the opposition in the 1960s and '70s – the likes of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Jack Brabham, and Kiwi contemporaries Bruce McLaren (a schoolmate), Denny Hulme, Chris Amon, Graham McRae and Graham Lawrence.

Now they're mainly unknowns but with the dollars to afford to buy, maintain and field the cars they loved watching in their youth.

F5000s are open-wheelers with 5-litre stock-block engines – mainly Chevrolets.

The huge field at Hampton Downs comprised many Lolas – the make that dominated the category in the mid-1970s, and Smith drove a T332 model – and McLarens and Chevrons, as well as the March, Surtees, McRae, Begg and Talon makes.

Some of Australia's top F5000 drivers from the good ol' days made nostalgic visits to the NZ festival and, while they didn't race, had a drive of some of the historic machinery.

Warwick Brown, the 1975 Tasman champion now 66, was reunited with the Lola T430 in which he won the '77 Australian Grand Prix at Sydney's Oran Park.

Queenslander Bruce Allison drove a T332 like that he once raced. This one was owned by Paul Zazryn, an Australian who ran up the front of the field throughout the NZ festival.

Among others there were Aussie great Kevin Bartlett, Kiwi Graeme Lawrence, Belgian Teddy Pilette and Nick Gethin, son of Britain's F5000 ace – and a Formula One GP winner – Peter Gethin.

But septuagenarian Smith was the star of the show – and showing no signs of slowing down, let alone retiring. He may be crusty in appearance but he remains a ball of enthusiasm.

He's in his 57th consecutive year of competition, having first won the NZ hillclimb title as a 17-year-old in 1958.

His achievements have included five Gold Stars as NZ's national open-wheeler champion, three NZ GP victories – in 1976, '90 and 2004 – as well as great success in Malaysia and some in Australia, but he never raced in Europe or America.

Smith had a heart triple bypass in the 1980s, has mentored many much younger Kiwi drivers – including Scott Dixon, Greg Murphy and Shane Van Gisbergen – and finds the T332's cockpit "as comfortable as a big armchair".

"I don't think I've got any slower," Smith says.

"My reaction time is as good as it's ever been.

"I'm as sharp as anyone when it comes to the lights on the grid.

"As long as I can see and get in a car and feel that I haven't lost the edge I will keep going."