The headline-act Australian GT Championship will be running its last race meeting of six at the Cromwell-based track and will feature 20 rare ''latest cars'', not seen before in New Zealand, manager Mike Sentch says.
Those attending the November 8-10 event can watch Aston Martins, Ferrari 458 Italia GT3s, Porsche GT3-Rs and Mercedes AMG SLS GT3s fighting for title honours. The 500-550hp race-bred beauties will be certain crowd pleasers, driven by ''quality'' drivers, whose names will be released closer to the race meeting, Sentch said.
''They are extremely quick. They have all got a different sound. In some ways they are going to appeal to a lot more people because they are exotic cars.''
He could confirm that Highlands Motorsport Park owner Tony Quinn's son, Klark, who is leading the GT championship, will be racing and that Tony's McLaren MP412C-GT3 supercar is scheduled to race, although its driver was not yet decided.
Practice and qualifying will be held on the Friday, with two 40-minute races on the Saturday.
The second championship finishing that weekend will be the South Island endurance series, which will have run three rounds - featuring one-hour and three-hour races - in Invercargill, Christchurch and Timaru.
In previous years, the series has held three rounds but secretary Chris Dunn jumped at the chance to bump it up to four.
''The opportunity to hold an additional round at Highlands will be awesome. It is the round of the Australian GT series and Highlands' official opening race meeting, so it will just be a huge event,'' he said.
While entry forms had not yet been issued by Highlands, Dunn expected cars driven in the other three rounds, such as a bevy of Porsche GT3s, a Ferrari 458, and an ex-Australian V8 Supercar, to be racing.
''Everyone wants to race there, make no bones about it,'' he said.
The new Toyota 86 racing series will be holding its debut round for the two-litre, Boxer-engined sports coupes. It has seven of its own, one-make category Motorsport NZ championship status events scheduled for the summer, although Highlands is the only South Island-based round.
Toyota Racing Series category manager Barrie Thomlinson said 20 cars were being built and although it was ''early days'' in sales terms, ''our hope is we will have 20 cars on the start line''.
Sunday's programme features the Highlands 101 - as in 101 laps - incorporating the top 42 Australian GT and New Zealand endurance cars.
Sentch said race was likely to last about 3 hours and was the kind of ''iconic endurance'' event Quinn had been building towards since he purchased the motorsport park last year.
