About Place to Race and the people behind it

Place To Race is a program, which was hatched over a glass of wine just two days ago (July, 30, 2009) – Sirromet of course!

Both of us decided that we were sick and tired of all the excuses and narrow-mindedness towards motorsport facilities in this great city of the Gold Coast.

This place is built on a fantastic motorsport history from the Australian Grand Prix through the streets of Southport in 1954, the development of the Surfers Paradise Raceway and Dragway to the original development of Indy (Now SuperGP) 19 years ago.

The Gold Coast has become the home of Australian motorsport – events, teams, drivers, owners, former national and world champions, organisations and everything in between.

Somewhere along the way we lost our way and we allowed the minorities to get into the ears of the bureaucrats who make decisions on the venues at the grassroots of motorsport.

Over the last 20 years Gold Coast motorsport venues have disappeared in plague proportions and none have been replaced – Mike Hatcher Raceway and Reedy Creek Raceway are next on the Gold Coast City Council’s shopping list – it has to stop!

These two venues cannot be close down without appropriate replacements being found.

At the same time a home needs to be found for the Gold Coast Kart Club, which has not had a home for 18 months – kids are either being lost to the sport or having to travel weekly to Ipswich or the Sunshine Coast to compete. we doubt that we would ever let that happen to our local footballers, hockey players or netballers.

If individual replacements are found then terrific, but it would be great to have an end goal of a motorsport precinct where we can build and show off this terrific sport and industry.

Imagine a place to take care of speedway, karts, drifting, motocross, off-road, rally, sprint boats, remote controlled vehicles, driver training and overall junior development.

Then add a professional precinct, museum, a V8 Supercar team, gift shops, engineering facilities – we would have another tourism destination.

All around the country, cities, smaller than ours, have motorsport precincts – areas which can never be encroached and that can be continually improved without the threat of one day being closed down by a housing development.

It is interesting to note that the Gold Coast City Council has a motorsport task force, which is made up of seven councilors – apart from the SuperGP – we wonder how many actual motorsport events these councilors have ever attended or if they actually know how much noise a kart or dirt bike makes?

To continually put funding into football, tennis, hockey, equestrian, soccer, netball and swimming facilities is the right thing to do – to ignore motorsports at the same time because of the voice of a nagging minority is NOT.

The issue of road safety and the benefits young people derive from motorsport activities is another entire argument of this debate – which simply cannot be treated seriously enough!

The overwhelming support we have had for this project in just a couple of days has proven alone that our time, efforts and cash are worth the investment.

To have the testimonial support of five of our former World Champions on day one is mind-blowing – and that is just the beginning!

The only thing we ask is that you register on this site and take on board all the information we intend to provide to you over the coming weeks as we build towards a public rally.

We will battle this as a massive group, but it is also important that you tackle each of your divisional councilors individually with emails, phone calls and visits to their offices – the home page has all their details.

Together we can get this done!

Terry and Crusher

WHO IS TERRY MORRIS?

Terry Morris is Chairman of Sirromet Wines at Mount Cotton. He is also Managing Director of the Gold Coast-based Morris International Group of Companies incorporating Information Technology, Data Processing and Property Investment. Terry’s diverse interests include the Arts and motor sports. He is the father of V8 Supercar driver and team owner Paul Morris and the owner of the Performance Driving Centre at Norwell, Queensland – one of the country’s leading driver training facilities. His passion for motorsports goes back to his childhood. He finally got the chance to compete at different levels once his highly successful career and group of businesses had been established.

WHO IS BRETT “CRUSHER” MURRAY?

Brett Murray is the founder of the BAM Group of companies, which incorporates offices on the Gold Coast, in Melbourne, Victoria and Charlotte, North Carolina. This group is involved in media, marketing, management and events and boasts some of the world’s leading events, drivers and corporations as clients. He has been the motorsports contributor to the Gold Coast Bulletin for the past 20 years. Crusher has been involved in motorsport at a professional level for the past 25 years. His 750th column in the Bulletin earned him personal congratulations from the sport’s biggest names from around the globe. He earned his well-known nickname while playing American Football (Gridiron) for Australia.