48 hours: Then, like magic, a welder turns up

Despite Greg Murphy's pained expression and words of frustration during the holdup in yesterday's V8 Supercar race at Pukekohe, the event has to be seen as a major triumph on one front.

The racing must have made excruciating viewing for Aucklanders in particular, who regard their weekend sport as a place to escape images of road rage, congestion and fender bending.

Worse still, at around midday the track looked like a scene from a shopping mall, except everyone - including the interviewers - were dressed like racing car drivers.

But the Supercar event did give massive hope to the many citizens out there waiting for a tradesman right now.

On the most obvious level, the speed of the tradesmen's service available was not a surprise. It almost went without saying, even though Murphy wasn't saying it, that the Kiwi ace's car would be fixed overnight after it had been turned into dog tucker - or make that a dog tucker can - in Saturday's race.

Motorsport is littered with dire driver predictions after such crashes.

"The car is destroyed - I don't think we will be here [on Sunday]," Murphy lamented in his statement on Saturday.

We all knew better of course. Motorsport is full of miracle car recovery stories.

For virtually every driver who has declared miserably that it is all over for the weekend are corresponding stories about drivers purring nonchalantly on to the track the very next day with a salvaged car that looks like it was nicked from a showroom.

This leads you to believe that the average racing car team is armed with stuff that is seriously more capable than a screwdriver and pair of pliers.

You also suspect that drivers know the more they publicly doubt the ability of their crew to perform a miraculous makeover, the more it spurs the backroom troops into action.

No, the really big surprise was how quickly the event organiser got a fence fixed yesterday.

Within half an hour of a section of the Pukekohe track perimeter being demolished by another out-of-control vehicle, blokes with welding gear were on the scene. How did they do that? You try getting a tradesman that quickly in Auckland right now.

"It depends on the weather and we've got a big job on in Albany but we should get there by Tuesday," is the stock answer with no absolute certainty of which particular Tuesday is meant.

Pukekohe needed instant service, and got it. Maybe there is a lull in the demand for welders. Or did that bloke happen to be coming back from a job in Patumahoe?

These are questions that may never be answered, along with the one about what kind of mental state led to the decision to introduce the reverse grid into the Supercar series.

The thing about a grid is that you can reverse it all you like and it still looks the same. It's the order of the cars that you put on the grid that matters, and in this case it matters a great deal to a lot of frustrated drivers.

Reverse grid is a lot easier to explain than cricket's reverse swing, but doesn't make any more sense.

Basically, all the best cars from the previous day's racing start at the back in race two, while the front rows are filled with learner drivers, people in 1960 Morris Oxfords, and a Lower Hutt schoolteacher driving the original bus from Blerta.

Maybe the idea is to give the Blerta bus driver a chance to stand on the podium - where other drivers would spray him with invective instead of champagne.

Reverse grid might actually be the sneaky Supercar way of introducing a crowd-pleasing demolition derby full of risky overtaking moves without officially announcing it.

The reason they want to keep it quiet is this: in most demolition derbies, the drivers are part-timers who use cars extracted from landfills, ie mangled motor vehicles which have already caused enough pain to others and deserve another sound beating.

In contrast, Supercar teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime vehicles and the best teams tend to hire drivers who do this lark fulltime and regard themselves as professional. Quite naturally, they aren't so keen on the physical contact aspect of sport and being stuck behind Morris Oxfords.

For citizens who live in West Auckland, drive over the Harbour Bridge every day or have to deal with the whiz-bang new Albert St traffic configurations, reverse grid concepts and all the consequences are an everyday part of life.

But it's easy to understand why people like Murphy, who have spent their lives risking all trying to go faster for their pleasure and ours, get a little frustrated when they find the reward for their skill is to be trapped in a bus lane.


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This is a howl of protest on behalf of the society for the preservation of the meaning of the Kiwi league jersey.

Are we really expected to applaud the announcement over the weekend that a team of British-based New Zealanders will play an official test against Great Britain at St Helens in late June?

Yes, it's hard to fit international league around the narrow-minded and self-centred interests of the European Super League and Australian NRL.

But there are only a couple of proper test teams in the world of league and the last thing the game needs is the watering down of the few legitimate internationals which can be staged.

If we've got to the point where we don't put out our best side against Great Britain, well what's the point?

Test matches are supposed to be an all-hands-on-deck battle to the last, not a trial game using whoever happens to be living in the neighbourhood at the time.

It's a disastrous idea in my book, the beginning of the end of test match league as we once knew it, and hoped to know it once again.

It has all the hallmarks of festival footy, and the public down this end of the world just won't go for it.

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From the strange but true file ... it took the Cheetahs 72 minutes to concede their first penalty against the Chiefs in Hamilton on Friday night.


This is even more of a rugby miracle when you consider that crowd reactions usually sway referees against visiting teams.