NEWS THAT the Shannons SpeedSeries will conclude this year ends a second-tier national racing championship lineage that goes back 18 years.

Founded as the CAMS National Motor Racing Championships in 2006, what became the SpeedSeries evolved and grew over the years and was both part-owned and part-managed by different parties.

However, in the same way Supercars can chase its way back to the roots of Touring Car racing in Australia, so can the SpeedSeries to the formative years of what became known to most as, ‘The Shannons’.

It is the longest lasting of any ‘tier two’ national championship platform Australia has enjoyed; sticking around longer than PROCAR did, the fleeting Power Tour, outlasting TOCA-run Super Touring, the various forms of the AMRS and pretty much anything else that offered a national-level hub for categories that wouldn’t always run on the Supercars support program.  

The CNRC, as it was initially known, was founded in 2006 as a partnership between CAMS and key national categories left floundering following the 2004 collapse of Ross Palmer’s PROCAR empire.

The first iteration of the ‘Australian Motor Racing Series’, founded by Garry Wilmington and Rod Dale, filled a void in 2005 however it was the collaboration between the governing body and key displaced categories – including Formula 3, Production Cars, Sports Sedans, Saloon Cars and Commodore Cup – that founded a new national series in 2006 that would become enduring.

With Rob Curkpatrick at the helm, strong backing also came from within CAMS with the likes of Peter Ryan and David Tait keen supporters in the early days, while category powerbrokers like Formula 3’s Jeff Mattner and later Porsche’s Jamie Blaikie were also influential.

The Nationals prioritized safe, solid and reliable events over glamour and hype (and therefore, inevitable financial peril) in a bid to inject some much-needed stability and consistency back into the national-level motorsport scene.

Shannons came on board in 2007, signing the first of what would be multiple agreements to become the title sponsor. Driven by the enthusiastic Paul Gates at the company end and by the stakeholders and competitors at the circuits, it took less than a year for the series to be known primarily by the sponsors name rather than any other nomenclature.

In the same way Adelaide’s street circuit event was never anything other than ‘The Clipsal’, so too did the insurance company end up being indelibly paired with the national-level racing tour it had decided – wisely, it turns out – to sponsor.

Though the modus operandi was to provide a reliable and affordable place to race for national categories, the Shannons series wasn’t without innovation.

The dramatic 2010 finale’ at Sandown was the first national circuit racing event of any note to be streamed live and free to the public online, in an era when things like 7plus or Kayo were a gleam in the eyes of the major networks. It would, when coupled with the post-produced TV show on ‘Speedweek’, become a staple of the series.

The Shannons’ was the first national tour to visit Morgan Park’s Raceway in Queensland, offered the platform for a group of enthusiasts to launch what is now Porsche Sprint Challenge at Mallala, introduced a third-tier V8 category and allowed for the youngest ever winner of a Touring Car race in Australia (Alex Rullo, Winton, 2015).

The Nationals hosted the first Gold Star race won by a woman and the closest ever Gold Star race finish, too. Oran Park’s final ever National-level meeting? Yep, that was a Shannons event. The first race meeting of any note at The Bend was a Shannons Round.

Long before Supercars returned to racing at night in Sydney, the Production Cars were doing so at Queensland Raceway and Porsche’s at Mallala at Nationals events.

There were memorable moments etched into the sport’s psyche, too; Dean Randle’s ridiculous rollover at Phillip Island and subsequent helmet toss at Daniel Tamasi remains one of the most oft-replayed Australian shunts ever. Copy and paste that for Graeme Holmes’ backflip in a Formula 3 car at Sandown.

As the series evolved so did its management, with Rob Curkpatrick ultimately taking full responsibility for the championship and son Liam coming on board as the Operations chief – while CAMS sat in the background to let it do its thing, which it did well.  

Over the years the trailers in the paddock gave way to transporters and b-doubles and more brands became involved on and off the track; The investment in national-level motorsport continued to grow and that came as a result of having a stable place to race.

However, the 2015-spec review of Australian Motorsport by the governing body, led by then-new CEO Eugene Arocca, highlighted an opportunity for them to take a more active role in the championship and they essentially assumed full control by the end of the 2015 season.

With hindsight, and the fact most involved have now left the governing body, there would be those who may admit now that they way they grabbed control at the time was perhaps not totally respectful to Curkpatrick’s long tenure and outstanding reputation.

Still, save for a branding upgrade and a change of people steering behind the scenes, things ticked on much the same as they were and once again the Nationals proved an excellent place for new categories to show their wares and existing ones to survive and even expand.

This was more evident than ever in 2019 as the Australian Racing Group (ARG) burst onto the scene, first with TCR Australia and later that year with an impressive debut for S5000 at Sandown Raceway.

A complete rebrand of the series coincided with CAMS’ change to Motorsport Australia in 2020, the ‘Nationals’ tagline gone and replaced with the longer Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships tag, though the use of the ‘SMAC’ acronym was sadly discouraged thus ruling out any chance of a post-event debrief show called ‘Talking Smac’ ever happening.

Of course, 2020 never happened and 2021 was very much racing interruptus as the Pandemic raged and state borders snapped shut or open in an instant.

The growing influence of ARG was felt further in 2022 when they, in partnership with Motorsport Australia, negotiated an extensive broadcast deal with Stan Sports which also saw the SMAC rebranded to the current ‘SpeedSeries’ moniker.

Whether that was the right deal for the time will be a debate for historians to have, but the fact that the series had evolved to a point where it could attract a significant broadcast package was nevertheless, impressive.

The rest, as they say, is history, and now it’s SRO and the GT World Challenge Australia Championship sliding into the headline slot by electing for a clean break and a chance to do their own thing their own way.

What it does do, however, is put a full stop on what was the CAMS Nationals; a series that started at Wakefield Park in 2006 and survived in its various forms and incarnations for 18 years.  

‘The Shannons’ probably won’t be remembered as strongly as PROCAR for it lacked the glitz and it probably won’t be remembered as notably as TOCA for being the underdogs trying to battle the V8’s at their own game, even if they did eventually lose.

For much of its journey, either by design or by necessity, ‘The Shannons’ allowed for the categories to be the headliners and the platform itself to sit in the background.

But it remains a critical chapter in the development of Australian Motorsport in the last two decades; one that rescued some categories from potential oblivion, allowed others to flourish and grow and provided a consistent, strong, well managed and promoted place to race that has allowed national-level, non-Supercars, motorsport in Australia to be as remarkably vibrant as it actually is.