By Tania Phillips
The roar of engines has returned to the Carnell Raceway out Stanthorpe way thanks to the Short Circuit Motor Sports Association, lots of volunteer working bees and support from the local and motorsports community.
Current Association president, Moss Lane (who somehow seems rather aptly named to be a motorsports president) said the track is up and racing and they are preparing for a busy time ahead.
The Association have already held their first Short Circuit race meeting late last month and are gearing up for the Big Chill bike race in mid-June.
“When the Short Circuit Motor Sports Association was formed in ’97 I was around then,” Moss, who is based in the Moreton Bay area and is a life-long motor sports enthusiast said. He said his name is a corruption of Morris and when asked if his dad, who introduced him to the sport and raced motorbikes, was a fan of famous racing identity Stirling Moss, he laughed – obviously not the first time he’d been asked.
Moss has been a long-term member of the Association and is pleased to finally see it find a home.
“I was president in the earlier days (of the group) but work and life got in the way and I was out of it for a little while. And then in recent times the long-term president stood down and I took over again, that was a couple of years now.
“Since then, we had the Carnell Raceway presented to us as an option to take over. We have spent the past 12 months working on the track and we’ve got it under control now. We’ve taken the complex over as our home track, we’re working on reorganizing the track and have built it up to a point where it’s a little bit more user friendly. We’ve done a lot of work on some of the safety items and the track and stuff like that.
“We’ve been looking for a home track for many years but trying to buy or form a track is a fairly daunting task for a non-profit organisation. The Stanthorpe Club were very people poor and we were in a good position. They thought it would be best if we came to look after the place, probably for the next 10 years.”
So, what does that mean for the Association and for the motor racing enthusiasts of Stanthorpe?
“Well for Stanthorpe, we’ve been coming to Stanthorpe, to the Carnell Raceway for well over 25 years now,” he said.
“It’s a very unique form of Motor Sport, we do the sprint racing – which is two cars on the track at the time. We also have short circuit touring cars which is virtually a club car. We can have as many as 14 cars on the track at one time in a competition.”
Members come from all over South-East Queensland and Northern NSW.
“We do have a few coming from Rockhampton way occasionally and over the border around Lismore and Tenterfield and Tamworth,” he said.
“Carnell is a fairly short drive in the scheme of things for people to come from over the border. We have been running a NSW – QLD challenge over the years but we’ve sort of fallen off times particularly now we have Carnell on our plate. We have been spending our time and resources tidying the track up.”
The May meeting was the first meeting that the group had held under their own umbrella at the Carnell track.
“We had a meeting at Morgan Park in Warwick in February, we committed to that last year,” he said.
“The Morgan Park event was very successful, we had 93 entries from memory – Morgan Park is quite a good complex but we were looking for a home.
“The May event here went extremely well, we had 56 entries – anything from street cars through to open wheelers and our short circuit touring cars. No major dramas from anyone’s point of view, a few cars had mechanical problems but basically it worked extremely well for us.”
Their next event will in August but while the Association is running Carnell, they won’t be the only organisation on track at the complex.
“The Motorbike Association is also still using Carnell,” Moss said.
“They have been at Carnell for many many years and now they’ve come in as a client of ours.
“They’re going to run an event in the middle of June which they call The Big Chill for obvious reasons in Stanthorpe,” Moss said.
“Middle of June in Stanthorpe you can guarantee its going to be cold. They’re a good bunch of people, similar to us – they race motorbikes we race cars but they use Carnell as their home track as well.
“When we were asked to take over the running of Carnell they were more than happy – they wanted to stay on and we wanted them to stay on because the bills have got to be paid.”
