Hampton Downs

Overview

Hampton Downs Motorsport Park stands on former dairy farmland in North Waikato, near Meremere and Te Kauwhata, beside the Waikato Expressway roughly halfway between Auckland and Hamilton. It is the northernmost circuit in New Zealand, holds an FIA Grade 3 licence and has been owned since 2015 by Tony Quinn, who also owns Highlands Motorsport Park in Cromwell. The circuit hosts rounds of the Formula Regional Oceania championship, the GR86 Championship New Zealand, the New Zealand Formula Ford Championship and the New Zealand Touring Car Championship, and it staged the New Zealand Grand Prix in 2021 and 2023. Track days, corporate events, a racing academy and motorcycle training fill the rest of the calendar.

Technical Specifications and Track Features

The International circuit, 3.8 km with 10 corners, links the original National circuit with the Club loop added in 2016. Clive Bowen handled the detailed design and FIA homologation. The front straight runs about 950 m with a rise and fall of 11 m, and the back straight runs about 750 m. The tyre barriers were assembled from some 47,000 car and truck tyres by inmates of Springhill Correctional Facility. Race control is integrated with start, flag and pit-lane lights, CCTV, timing, sound monitoring and pit-lane speed checks, and an automated system warns the operator within 30 seconds if a car stops on track. The International lap record is 1:27.637, set by Michael Lyons in a McLaren M26 Formula One car on 20 January 2017.

Facilities and Specialized Areas

Hospitality suites sit above the pits. Around 80 trackside apartments overlook the circuit, many of them let as motel-style rooms for up to six people, and a business park offers units with garages for seven cars. A 530-metre kart track, a wet skid pan and public track cruises on the National circuit are open to visitors, alongside a cafe, conference rooms and vehicle storage. The Bruce McLaren Trust keeps a collection of memorabilia in an industrial unit on site that can be viewed most days. Driver training runs through Downforce, and the California Superbike School bases its New Zealand fleet here. A 2012 consent allows up to 50,000 spectators a day.

History

Motorsport friends Tony Roberts and Chris Watson bought two dairy farms from Envirowaste in December 2003. Resource consent took a year, cost about one million dollars and was granted in late 2006, and Jonny Reid made the first cut with an excavator on 23 February 2007. A very wet winter delayed the work, and the circuit opened on 18 October 2009 with temporary pits. The official opening came in January 2010 at a festival honouring Bruce McLaren, attended by 24,000 people, and in May 2010 the track held a super special stage of the World Rally Championship. The pit buildings followed in January 2011, and the V8SuperTourer series made its debut there in 2012, won by Greg Murphy. Quinn bought the park in June 2015 and funded a 25 million dollar refurbishment completed in 2016, when the extended International circuit opened with the Hampton Downs 101 GT3 race in October. A Supercars round planned for 2020 was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.