Horse 3258 - Sydney Speedway - No Upcoming Events At All?!

https://www.easterncreekspeedway.com.au

The Sydney speedway community is in turmoil after it has been revealed that the entirety of the 2023-24 Eastern Creek season, scheduled to commence on Saturday week, has been cancelled.

It used to be that once upon a time in Sydney, we were spoiled for choice when it came to motor racing venues. Within the confines of Sydney's greater environs we had Castlereagh Dragway and Oran Park, Amaroo Park, Warwick Farm raceways, and speedway held at Castlereagh, Liverpool, Granville, and the old Sydney Showground. As it currently stands, every single one of those venues has been closed; with the last remaining stand for motor racing in Sydney being Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek. It has a Racing Circuit, a Dragway and a completely unusable Speedway. How did we get here?

The long answer is that as Sydney swelled from 3 million to 5 million people, it needed somewhere to house them; and as NIMBYism runs absolutely rampant in this myopic tory paradise, the only option was urban sprawl combined with moving the poors out into less connected or even unconnected areas with regards transport. Housing first ate the fields and what used to be Sydney's food bowl of small market garden farms, and then it picked off the motor racing venues and golf courses. 

This explains why Castlereagh, Oran Park, Amaroo Park, Warwick Farm, and Liverpool Speedway were all demolished but not Granville Showground which was later renamed Parramatta Speedway. This particular venue was eaten up when the then Berejiklian Government decided that it wanted to (or rather was forced to) build light rail services in lieu of proper railway lines, and then proper railway lines. Parramatta Speedway was demolished in order that a marshalling yard for the Parramatta Light Rail was built.

So with Andrew Constance as Transport and Infrastructure Minister, the Berejiklian Government decided that it would demolish Parramatta Speedway and build a replacement venue at Sydney Motorsport Park at Eastern Creek. This was find in theory, except that things are not built in theory and what looks good on paper generally doesn't look as good once someone has started ruling through plans with a big red pen.

The Berejiklian Government with Andrew Constance as Transport and Infrastructure Minister, managed to turn what was once a $40m project into one which blew out to more than $100m and which ultimately does not work and can not be used after a shower of rain.

The drainage pools in the infield which were supposed to be 3m deep, are only about 900mm deep and because the grandstands are paved over in concrete, the water flows down the hills and collects between the grandstands and the outer wall; before weeping through at the drainage points.

Building a speedway requires a slightly different set of expertise to merely building ever more soulless apartment blocks. It requires massive earthworks and depending on how the shape of the venue is formed, it might mean banked pours for concrete at at least 10°. For reference, the usual crossfall on either side of the crown of a regular roadway is about 1.2°. After speaking to someone familiar with just the hydraulic aspects of this kind of civil engineering, the impression that I get is that the best option at this point would be a complete knock down and rebuilt but save the grandstands.

Instead of being a simple third-mile oval, packed in gravel and paved over with dirt; what we have is a giant saucer of mud which drains nowhere and as it drains nowhere, is completely useless for the purpose intended. It is an unmitigated disaster; which was built by a tory government who handed the contract to their mates, rather than looking for anyone with proper expertise in building speedways.

The fabulous flood of fever that was COVID-19, was an infrastructure blessing. With everything cancelled or closed, it provided the perfect cover to build things. Unfortunately for the Berejiklian Government, due to its incompetence and corruption, managed to screw this up royally. Firstly the 2020 season was cancelled due to COVID, then the 2021 season because the Speedway had been delayed. Then the 2022 season was run as a patchwork of oddness before they realised that the venue isn't really fit for purpose. The 2023 season has just been abandoned because the underlying issues are simply too great.

The sport has received several setbacks of late, with this being a substantial blow to the NSW Speedway community, with Queensland’s Archerfield having gone by the wayside at the end of last season, as well as the cancellation of the World Series Sprintcars for 2023, as well as scheduling issues with the 2025 Grand Annual Classic.

Billed as a world class facility when it first opened, the design of the track itself is said to be a major drainage problem with its saucer like design and viewing areas that slope steeply down toward the track. Saturated areas would often occur that wouldn’t dry up, which caused many of the cancellations.

Sydney used to be this privateer hub of various motorsport teams across many disciplines but not any more. Sydney is now a terrible place to be based and without a speedway for the foreseeable future, why bother? The nearest speedway is in Newcastle.

If I had $100m to blow on a venue, then I might think about building a proper mile-and-a-half speedway but not a third-mile dirt oval. This is the problem that every motor racing venue ultimately suffers from. It is almost unviable to keep them running and very few people outside of governments have access to the capital needed to build them in the first place. When things are build on the cheap and not by proper experts, then if the thing wants to be able to work, then good money has to be thrown in after bad and there is almost never an economic case for doing so.

In the meantime, Sydney's Speedway community withers and fades and can not be expected to continue as once was.