It always feels good to start a new project, and it feels even better when that project is a racecar. The format that my good friend Chris and I plan to follow is to take a car to The Surgery Sprints, and let you know the basics of what you need to get into the series.

From there, we will develop a car and its drivers over the many rounds ahead, sharing what we are doing and what we have learned along the way.

So the best place to start is – what are The Surgery Sprints?

What are The Surgery Sprints?

The Surgery Sprint Series is a long-standing fixture on the lower North Island’s club racing calendar, held at Manfeild Circuit, Chris Amon. It’s been a feature for well over 20 years and continuously sponsored by the well-known Wellington-based classic restoration workshop, The Surgery. The Sprints offer a relaxed and safe bridge to entry into official motor racing thanks to its low-key, friendly atmosphere and strict no-contact nature.

This event is ideal for anyone who wants to go that bit further than a track day, wants to start to really develop their driving skills, and to have their laps timed and some points awarded. It’s also a great event that introduces drivers and their vehicles to the world of official motorsport scrutineering. To help with this, the team at Lake Auto Services in Lower Hutt hold a pre-event scrutineering evening on the Thursday before the round date, between 5:30 and 6:30. This allows drivers who are new to remove some anxiety and get their car checked over and approved, before they head up to Feilding on race day.  

The event follows a straightforward format: participants can choose between single-car or dual-car sprints. This means that you are released either on your own or in pairs. In both cases, cars are released onto the track at 10-second intervals and complete three laps from a flying start. Drivers earn points based on their achieved times, which contribute to both individual and overall club prizes.

Difference between Single and Dual-Car sprints

  • Single-car sprints – Competitors line their cars up against the pit lane. As that group goes out, each car is let out individually with 105 second gaps. This group is great for drivers who are new to the series
  • Dual-car sprints – Competitors line their cars up in the 4 lanes entering the pit lane. Fast cars on the left two lanes and speed-challenged cars on the right two lanes. As that group goes out, two cars are let out together with 10 second gaps

Being a member of a car club does help, but it’s not required to get started initially. The following clubs are all recognised as official car clubs: 

How are the vehicles broken into classes?

The vehicles that enter the Sprint are broken up into separate classes, each defined by their engine cc rating. These classes also have a coefficient multiplier for turbo & supercharged of 1.7, rotary of 1.8 and turbo rotary of 3.0. As an example, if your vehicle has a 1.6-litre naturally aspirated engine, you would be in class U2 or M2 (Unmodified or Modified). However, if your vehicle is a 2.0-litre turbocharged engine, your rating is 2 x 1.7, which is 3.4 or 3,400cc, putting you in class U4 or M4. 

  • Unmodified (U) & Modified (M) 
  • U1/M1: 0001 to 1300 cc
  • U2/M2: 1301 to 1800 cc
  • U3/M3: 1801 to 2500 cc
  • U4/M4: 2501 to 4000 cc
  • U5/M5: 4001 & over

To avoid questions about this later, this is the definition of the two class standards:

  • A Standard car (Unmodified) is one that in its present specification could have been driven off the showroom floor
  • A Modified car is one which includes any mechanical modification, whether homologated or not, that enhances performance on the track

How are times logged and points awarded?

As outlined, this event is low-key, which also means it’s low tech. The event is backed by a team of volunteers that record the lap times for each car on the track throughout the day. Each time a group of cars is ready to go out, the numbers are reported to the volunteers in the viewing tower, and they will log each of your 3 hot laps.

At the end of the event, times are recorded and points are awarded. All the times are available during the day, and the full list of points and lap times generally becomes available on The Surgery’s website the following day. Points on the day are awarded for Clubs & Individuals as follows:

  • 1st – 15 Points
  • 2nd – 12 Points
  • 3rd – 10 Points
  • 4th – 8 Points
  • 5th – 7 Points
  • 6th – 6 Points
  • 7th – 5 Points
  • 8th – 4 Points
  • 9th – 3 Points
  • 10th – 2 Points
  • 11th and on 1 point
  • 12 pts only for 1st place in a 1 Car Class

You are allowed to track your own time onboard, but your times are not valid towards the point system. 

Misconceptions around The Surgery Sprints?

There are a lot of misconceptions around this particular motorsport series, where many drivers feel it will be too hard to get involved with, because you need a full spec’d, logbook-approved, motorsport racecar. This is not the case, and this is exactly what we are keen to showcase and debunk. 

The range of drivers and vehicles that turn up to the Surgery Sprints is unlike any other motorsports event around the country. If your car is fast enough, you could be in a group with a Porsche GT2 Cup car, or if your vehicle is speed challenged, you could be fighting it out with someone who just bought a cheap, road-legal car off Trade Me. The drivers’ skills are just as extreme. There are many seasoned drivers there who are more than happy to chat with you, share information about their car, or even jump into your car to give you some guidance/pointers around the track. 

What are the requirements for The Surgery Sprints?

The requirements for participation are basic, which makes it accessible to a wide range of enthusiasts. Participants need road-legal tires, fire-resistant overalls, a helmet, and a fire extinguisher securely fitted to the car with a metal bracket. If you don’t feel up to doing this yourself, the Team at The Surgery can fabricate and mount your fire extinguisher for you. As these parts must be in line with the Motorsport New Zealand Manual 4.8 Schedule A – Drivers & Vehicle Safety Part One.

Open-top cars are also required to have a roll cage, and that’s it. 

A motorsport licence is not required at all for single car sprints (unless MSNZ change the rules). Club membership is not required for the first two events (single or dual) but is needed from the third event onwards. Competitors can keep buying a day licence (for the dual sprints) as long as they like, but the cost of doing that quickly exceeds the cost of just buying an M grade licence.

If you are interested in participating in The Surgery Sprints, there are several useful links below to get the ball rolling. 

Link to The Surgery Classic Restorations Website

What vehicle has been selected as Project Racecar?

Our goal is to take a car, and document the road to The Surgery Sprints, what it takes to get on the track and what happens as we develop the vehicle and its drivers over the coming rounds and future seasons. This just leaves us with one more question, what car will become Project Racecar?

I have been very fortunate to have access, through DriveLife to a wide range of cars for our vehicle reviews. Since 2012 It has enabled me first-hand experiences of a lot of performance vehicles, both on the roads and on the track. Over that time and the many hundreds of cars we have tested, one car has always stood out to me. This car embodied the right combination of performance, engineering, driver feel, simplicity, sound and fun. That car is the OG BMW M2, which I fell in love with after reviewing it early in 2018. 

I also reviewed the M2 Competition, and said the M2 Competition is the perfect track weapon. So, many suggested this one, and there are two main reasons we didn’t get it; First, the OG is more fun on the road, and we didn’t know how long it would stay as a road-legal car too. The second, and slightly more important one, was that there were none for sale in New Zealand at the time we were looking. Additionally, it could limit our project build if we started with a prebuilt track weapon. 

To learn more about it, jump over to the full reviews I did on the M2 and M2 Competition below.

And so it begins, the road to The Surgery Sprint with Project Racecar / BMW M2.

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John Galvin (JSG)
John Galvin (JSG)
http://www.drivelife.co.nz
It started at a young age with bedroom posters, the Countach of course. This slowly grew into a super car die-cast model collection, fifty five 1:18 models at the last count. At which point it had almost taken full control, the incurable Mad Car Disease ran deep though my veins all the way to the bone. And things for my loved ones just got worse as the cars where now being bought at 1:1 scale, after a BMW, HSV, and couple of Audi's, the disease reached my brain, pushing me over the edge and down the rabbits hole into the world of the bedroom poster.

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