New Zealand Tourist Trophy and other NZ Motorcycle Races

[Oldfart]

Thanks GregT. I suspect that may be why there can be a level of confusion, as for the last 6 decades I have assumed a "road race" to be on roads, not circuits.

[GregT]

The "Road race" term I assume came about to differentiate between scrambles/Motocross on a soft surface and races held on a hard formed surface.
"Scrambles" held on rough ground were certainly run here well before WW2. My father talked of riding in them as well as Hillclimbing around the Canterbury area

In Europe and the USA of course there were "Track" races on banked tracks like Brooklands and the board tracks. If you want to get awkward about it, I've seen the racing at some Uk circuits prewar described as "Path racing"

It can be a bit of a minefield..

[jellywrestler]

JW, a quote from you 14th Oct "There was also road races held at Seagrove prior to this meeting too." Were these held on the roads at Seagrove, or on the airfield? What qualifies as "Road Races", I visited a number of the Northern Ireland road venues apart from being insane, they have to be on roads, not constructed circuits

In NZ we have rule books for road racing and other classes, it's about the style of bike rather than venues. Seagrove did some racing on the airstrip and some including the NZTT on a combination of the airfield and the roads at the facility. In my book New Zealand Motorcycle Road Racing Circuits I covered Airfeild, closed circuits, street circuits (like cemetery circuits 1 mile downtown) and road races, like pateas 10 mile 16 km circuit. I've covered 160 venues inc variations of them in nz, for the airfield ones i only covered one version at each venue, as the layout was often a fixed route yet corners varied due to traffic cone placemnet on wide open spaces effectively giving them endless options. hope that claifies things?

[Roger Dowding]

The New Zealand TT moved from Waiheke - 1931 to 1950 to Seagrove Airfield.
Some details have already been posted on here.

In the NSCC thread has been photos of Car Racing.

Here the Airfield - aerial view.



The TT Track outlined over the Airforce Map with notes by : " jellywrestler " aka Graeme Staples.
Cars only used the Runways but the Bikes used other parts of the area.