MOTORSPORT: Fresh hope for Sydney speedway

Sydney’s speedway community, devastated that it will lose Parramatta City Raceway (PCR) within two years, has been assured of a replacement in the city’s west – most likely within the Sydney Motor Sport Park precinct at Eastern Creek.

The NSW Government, keen to appease angry dirt-track fans, has even claimed the popular sport will have “a bigger and brighter future in the region for decades to come”.

The operators of PCR (officially branded Valvoline Raceway in recent years) were told in a phone call on Monday that the land on which the operation sits will be compulsorily acquired.

The site will become stabling yards and an operations centre for Sydney’s $20 billion Metro West driverless train project.

While the news was “absolutely devastating” to PCR operators Barry and Felicity Waldron, and several hundred speedway fans gathered there yesterday in support of the venue, the NSW state government has been quick to promise that another home will be found for dirt-track racing.

NSW Transport minister Andrew Constance and acting sport minister, Geoff Lee, vowed that the government was “absolutely committed to relocating speedway racing in Sydney”.

“I acknowledge the longstanding presence of the Sydney Speedway and its significance to Western Sydney over the last 42 years,” Constance said.

“I am absolutely committed to ensuring that speedway racing has a bigger and brighter future in the region for decades to come. The NSW Government owns sufficient land in Western Sydney to accommodate a new speedway facility,” the minister said.

A government-initiated forum was already scheduled with various motorsport organisations for November 15 to discuss “the potential masterplan of the new Sydney Motorsport Precinct at Eastern Creek”.

However, with PCR to close in 2021, there must be doubts about whether a new speedway can be planned, designed and built in time for racing by 2022.

The NSW state government has already allocated $33 million for other projects at the Eastern Creek site which in recent years has become known as Sydney Motor Sport Park.

These include permanent lighting for the road courses there as well as a ‘centre of excellence’.

It is also intended that the new Sydney-based Supercar car team for which James Courtney will race next year will eventually have its base there.

PCR has been the big-city hub of Australian sprintcar racing, with Victorian regional city Warrnambool the country’s other major centre for the sport.

Among the stars to have raced at PCR have been American Steve 'King' Kinser, his protege Donny Schatz and another American dirt-track great and triple NASCAR champion, Tony 'Smoke' Stewart – until an infamous punch-up with a former promoter in 2011.

PCR also has been home to arguably Australia’s best speedway racers Garry Rush and the Tatnells, the late George, and son Brooke.

The 460-metre banked oval track has outlived other once-prominent speedways at the Sydney Showgrounds and Liverpool.

Long-time television motorsport commentator, dirt-track devotee and one-time chief executive of PCR, Mike Raymond, said on his Facebook page that the compulsory acquisition of the existing site was “sad” but that “it was always going to happen, sooner or later”.

Raymond lamented that the Waldrons had only been notified of the acquisition by telephone. The venue’s lease was due to expire in 2026 and said they had been in talks for two years on a 30-year extension without any mention of compulsory acquisition.

The Waldrons said PCR was “hallowed ground” for a sport almost a century old in Australia, having started at Maitland in NSW's Hunter Valley in 1923.

“This is devastating, absolutely devastating,” Barry Waldron said.

“I can’t believe that, in all our dealings with the government through Crown Lands, in our proposed long-term planning discussions, nobody thought to give us even a hint that this could happen.

“How is it possible something as enormous as that could be overlooked? The Australian speedway industry is rocked by this news,” Waldron stated.