The Bend Motorsport Park

[heater31]

Have a chat with the Coonalpyn locals - their servo is being removed all together to avoid competition. Will have to drive to Tinty for fuel

Yep, I know. The Peregrine group brought the Coonalpyn servo and promptly closed it. Poor form, not a good way to treat people on the land.

That's how they operate.........I know of a large country based builder won a tender to build them a store in his local area, had the contracts sent over. They were sent back with an amendment to the price of $50k less with the excuse that is all they wanted to pay. Builder told them to **** off.

[Bandit]

Have a chat with the Coonalpyn locals - their servo is being removed all together to avoid competition. Will have to drive to Tinty for fuel

Yep, I know. The Peregrine group brought the Coonalpyn servo and promptly closed it. Poor form, not a good way to treat people on the land.

That's how they operate.........I know of a large country based builder won a tender to build them a store in his local area, had the contracts sent over. They were sent back with an amendment to the price of $50k less with the excuse that is all they wanted to pay. Builder told them to **** off.

Big business, small town - pretty standard result unfortunately.

You dont make the kind of $$$ to build a race track by giving competition a leg-up.

Having said that, the upshot to the surrounding towns will be huge once "the bend" is fully functional. They have also employed a lot of locals so im not bagging them

[Booney]

Correct, it's not all doom and gloom.

There will be plenty of people employed by the 24 hour OTR. What that does to the Coolabah Cafe is anyone's guess though.

[Bandit]

Bit of an update - some interesting points about the "High rollers" they are expecting to house cars there will need decent on-site security!

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/motor-sport/the-bend-motorsport-park-take-the-first-hot-lap-of-australias-newest-racetrack/news-story/56562c2f321ebd019a78cfe35046c98a

*I didn't need an Adelaide now account when I first saw this - maybe google if your interested and follow that link as that's what I did...

[Dogwatcher]

Have a chat with the Coonalpyn locals - their servo is being removed all together to avoid competition. Will have to drive to Tinty for fuel

Yep, I know. The Peregrine group brought the Coonalpyn servo and promptly closed it. Poor form, not a good way to treat people on the land.

I was in the area on the weekend and spoke to a local farmer about this situation.
He said Coonalpyn locals only have themselves to blame for the closure - they were offered the chance to put together a community purchase of the servo and they didn't. They knew OTR were circling and 'let it happen'. "All they had to do was look around and see who's buying servos in SA and who was building just down the road from them to know what was going to happen".
It was interesting to hear this perception, albeit with a fair hint of neighbourly bias.
"Those Coonalpyn people are a strange lot," he said, later in the night.

[Bandit]

I went to the "400 Thunder" event at AIR on the weekend and whilst the cars were sensational it only highlighted the need for "the bend" to get their drag strip up and running.

Firstly, if you havent seen Top Fuel before then you are missing an unbelievable experience. Your whole body gets rattled as they go down the track. Doorslammers were awesome too and the other support categories had pretty good entrant numbers.
I dont know what the crowd figure was but on Saturday when I was there it must have been 6-8k, a lot of people coming and going so hard to estimate, not sure on Friday but in my eyes thats pretty decent crowd numbers.

But... The AIR facilities are so run down that its embarrassing to expect interstate drivers to attend these events. I wont bitch about everything but needless to say its all old and just portrays a bad image for the category. Its great that people like the promoters/event organisers put their time/effort/money into holding the event but a shame the facility available lets the overall product down.

Once "the bend" gets its drag strip operational (currently early 2019 according to website) then i'd encourage any motorsport fans to get out there and support it and dont think of the facility as a v8 supercar track and nothing else as there will be a lot if different motorsport categories represented.

[Wedgie]

I could imagine how run down the facilities are because they were completely run down when I got to hoon around there 20 years ago!
Got to go around Mallala too and as run down as it also was the AIR was much worse.

[Bandit]

Getting closer...
https://www.speedcafe.com/2023/05/26/th ... on-opener/
https://www.speedcafe.com/2023/05/26/ne ... -calendar/

[locky801]

No Supercar event scheduled there in 2024

[dedja]

With a promise of an enduro in 2025 apparently. Let’s see if eventuates.