ADMIT IT, when Supercars announced their New Zealand return would come via a smallish, country circuit three and a half hours South of the biggest population base in the nation, you probably rolled your eyes.

Sure, there was a dim memory of A1GP being held at Taupo in another lifetime, and some domestic Kiwi racing stuff over the summer tucked away on Aussie pay TV, but that was about it.

Surely, I bet you thought, Hampton Downs would have been a better bet. Or Highlands. Or better yet, just don’t close Pukekohe..

I thought a lot of those thoughts too.

Turns out, we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Turns out, Taupo is the perfect place for Supercars.

Like, perfect with a capital P.

The city itself is large enough to support the accommodation, logistical and catering requirements for such a large influx of tourists – after all, it does that all year as a summer hub for the lakeside views and a winter one for the nearby ski fields in the Tongariro National Park.

In a full week in town, we didn’t have a bad meal and didn’t have a bad view, either.

There’s plenty of local logistics ready to support any needs – lots of hardware stores, shopping centers and morning Coffee stops. There’s even a quite vibrant nightlife, which is important..

Furthermore, it’s incredibly beautiful, easy to get around and ten minutes from the track.

It feels like Cowes on Phillip Island – it’s a nice place to visit even if you’re not there for car racing.

And yet Taupo isn’t too big that the Sport vanishes within the town.

It’s a small enough place that everyone knew Supercars were there and were there to make a mark.  

When going out for dinner you’d be guaranteed to run into some motorsport people, or see people in racing gear in every bar or every eatery.

It was genuinely the talk of the town and that’s a good thing indeed – certainly, it was never like that in Auckland. Staying in the big smoke for Pukkie always felt somewhat removed from what was going on.

In Taupo that was never the case. I can’t speak for the A1GP era, but Supercars’ arrival in Taupo genuinely felt like the biggest thing the town had ever seen.

Certainly the Track to Town was an unparalleled success.

Sometimes there’s an argument that being the biggest fish in a smaller pond is a better outcome than being a moderately large fish in a gigantic ocean – and this is absolutely the case.

And then there’s the track which was an even bigger surprise than the fantastic town itself.

I think Taupo has suffered from a bit of The Bend-itis in the past, in that on TV it all looks a bit complicated, is sometimes hard to follow around a lap and hard to plot who is where and when on any given lap. To me it always felt like a squiggly line in a paddock with not much else around.

And yet in person it’s so much more. There’s elevation change, for starters – subtle, yes, but it’s there in the same way it is at Taliem Bend, too. Furthermore, it’s all in front of the paying punters – especially with the temporary infrastructure in place for the weekend and even more so with all of those stands and the spectator banks filled up.

The grandstands and general admission viewing all made it feel stadium-like which in my eyes absolutely made up for the lack of having Pukekohe’s Ford Mountain and the passionate fans in the back of most shots of that grand old track.

Is Taupo Pukekohe? Obviously, no. It’s not as fearsome, it doesn’t have the bonkers Turn one or the bumps or the historical value that made the track closer to Auckland so brilliant.

But at the same time, it’s miles safer and it’s absolutely not uninteresting; almost everyone we spoke to said it raced much, much better than they expected and I think the vision backed that up.

It has genuine character, both within the surface itself and in the surrounds, with the epic Mount Tauhara looming in the background and the ever-changing weather conditions that follow. It’s all very Kiwi.

All that, coupled with Supercars’ always impressive camera placements, in-car cameras and drone use, made it feel all very big boy race car event. Which of course, it was.

There’s history too; you just have to dive a bit deeper. But the amount of memorabilia in local eateries with nods to Kiwi racing heritage is proof of the circuit’s long existence and those greats to have raced there.

Sure there’s stuff to improve for next year – but there always is. The corporate suites didn’t sell out, perhaps indicating that three hours is a bit far for weekend warriors to travel to get on the piss to watch racing cars.

Traffic was well managed but, as we outlined in the Power Rankings, the sheer volume of it meant for long queues getting in and especially out of an evening. If you parked in the Motorsport (teams, media etc) carpark behind the pits you were a lucky person. If you were out on the airfield nearby, you were in for a wait.

There were other little things that will no doubt be tuned up by Supercars’ experienced events team and the brilliant operators that circuit owner Tony Quinn has in place to run his circuits in NZ. For a first-up effort, this was excellent.

This was an important weekend for Supercars in one of their most important markets.

Not having a presence last year was a borderline travesty given the weight of support the sport carries in the land of the long white cloud.

And while the initial move to go to Taupo might’ve seen out of place or even risky, it has proved far from the case.

The sport now has a firm foundation to build on their New Zealand roots and entrench itself at a place that can become a genuine destination for fans.

After all; 50,000 people are willing to make the hike to Bathurst every year – and I’m here to tell you the three and a bit hours from Auckland to Taupo is much, much less stressful and much, much prettier than the same hike over the Blue Mountains to the Great Race.

Now, about that double header..

TAUPO TOUR DIARY NOTES:

Several drivers showed visible stress when they first encountered one of the many (some say 30) surface changes on Taupo’s layout, most notably the one that happens about 90 centimeters after the grid boxes on the front row of the grid.

“You could make the best start of your life,” one driver told TRT early in the week, “And you’re going to get three feet and then burst into wheelspin when you get on the old surface. It’d be good to qualify third here..”

Example A (Supercars Race one) and B (Carrera Cup races) proved this to be a legit comment. Finally, a way to mix up the grid without needing to invert positions!  

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The geothermal plant located across the road from the circuit has only recently just come on line and when fully operational will generate 3.5% of New Zealand’s entire electrical supply – purely from the fact Taupo is parked on top of what is a rather large volcano.

It’s a fascinating thing, though by the 50^th time we heard the “And you’ve seen where the New Zealand Clouds are made?” punchline rolled out, you began to roll your eyes.

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If you were fortunate enough to leave the circuit at a sensible time, you could take in the Huka Falls (a part of the Waikato river, New Zealand’s longest, that shifts 250 million litres of water per second don’t you know) or the local hot springs (refer above post about the whole active Volcano thing) – all within 10 minutes of the circuit.

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New Zealand Formula Ford is epic. Central Muscle Cars are brilliant. Can we please have CTFROC there in 2025?

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Local businesses did a rip-roaring trade in Emergency supplies, with one support category in particular becoming extremely friendly with the local Bunnings, the local signage / sticker company and the bakery located next door and that’s before going to dinner or the bottle shop.. There is genuine, measurable economic impact of the sport coming to Taupo and I’ve got the receipts to prove it.

Fun fact: turns out in New Zealand, when you order a steak and bacon pie, rather than dicing it up, they jam the entire bacon rasher in there. Highly recommended.

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When in Rome, do as the Romans do – so naturally whilst in the Waikato region we drank Waikato Draught. Our Kiwi interpreter, looking on disapprovingly, explained it as something akin to what VB or XXXX is to beer in Australia – but we found that confusing because its entirely drinkable.

Special mention also to the excellent Central Otago Pinot Noir we enjoyed on one of the nights whilst at dinner. For some reason I can’t for the life of me what it was called, nor the name of the restaurant in which we consumed it, but It was delicious.

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I won’t go into too much detail about the joy many members of the Aussie fraternity had in rolling out the worst possible New Zealand impressions across the weekend, only to say I’ll still be speaking like that in a month. The Kiwi’s took it with typical good grace. Generally. Thanks, bro – Chur.

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The Two Mile Bay Sailing Club, unsurprisingly located in Two Mile Bay just to the South of the main Taupo township, is the only waterfront bar and eatery in the area and it is epic.

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Taupo’s Maccas has a Douglas DC3 plane parked in (on?) it, and you can go inside and eat your happy meal in it. It is, unsurprisingly, brilliant.

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New Zealand loves roadworks, possibly more than the people that have the Great Western Highway from Sydney to Bathurst in a perpetual state of destruction.

It is a verifiable fact that there are currently more orange cones on State Highway 1 than there are Sheep in New Zealand.

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Just around the corner from the DC3 is a café named ‘Café Baku’ and yes, it’s named after the city in Azerbaijan. A large print of the Formula One race in said city takes pride of place on the wall and no, I don’t know why it’s a thing either – but all the same it works. Good Coffee.

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On a more sombre note; The remarkable life of Sir Colin Giltrap was brilliantly chronicled across the weekend. New Zealand Motorsport should be incredibly proud of itself for what it has achieved, no small part on account of the man many call the ‘Godfather’ of the sport. It was nice to see the family present on the weekend, cheering on Marco Giltrap and their Kiwi Supercars stars, despite their loss just a day before the event.

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I will leave you with the single best thing I learned all week, something that has genuinely enriched my knowledge of the Mauri people and their language for the better.

The Mauri word for ‘Scissors’ is – and I am not joking – ‘kutikuti’.

I will now never not call them that.