Queenstown-raised racing car driver Max Perkins says winning a motorsport cup last awarded 29 years ago is “absolute gold”.

He was competing in this month’s first Queenstown Road Race Revival — the brainwave of his dad Wayne, who organised it.

In the ’90s, the Queenstown Classic Road Race had been “the most popular classic motor racing event in the South Island, it used to attract between 3000 and 4000 spectators each year”, Wayne says.

However, it was not run again after two spectators were killed during the tragic ’98 event.

“There was a sort of underlying thought, there can never be a road race in Queenstown again, but the spirit of it was really good,” says Wayne, who competed himself and was on the race committee.

“I thought, it’d be rather neat to have a revival, so we asked [Invercargill’s] Teretonga, and they were wildly enthusiastic because they were involved in the original one — [Southland Sports Car Club] provided all the flag marshalls and all the personnel to run a race meeting.”

The revival meet, two weekends ago, attracted 18 pre-1978 classic saloons — “it was two of the original categories amalgamated”.

Wayne brought his Vauxhall Visa he used to run in the Queenstown race, but it blew a gasket during qualifying.

Max, who got his race licence at 12 and used to watch his dad compete in Queenstown, had been lent Wayne’s ’67 Chevrolet Camaro RS/SS.

“I did actually offer it back to dad, and he was, like, ‘no, no, you stick with it for the weekend’.”

Of the four races held, Max won both the grid races including the Flying Farewell for which the original Skyline Queenstown Cup — last awarded in ’97 — was up for grabs.

“I must admit, I really was very keen to win it, so I sort of put all my eggs into that basket, and to be able to pick it up, it was just absolute gold.”

Used to racing his BMW Turbo, Max says he enjoyed driving the Camaro — “like, it’s got a big V8 up the front and sounds absolutely glorious, it sounds like a V8 supercar.”

Former Queenstowner Eric Swinbourn, meanwhile, took home the Queenstown Road Race Revival Trophy for picking up the most points across the four races in his Suzuki SC100.

Wayne says he planned the revival meet as a potential one-off, “but we’ve got people entering already for next year, reconditioning cars for next year”.

He will probably revive two or three more of the original classes — “there’ll be single-seaters and stuff like that as well”.

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