The Adelaide International Raceway (also known as Adelaide International or AIR) is a permanent circuit owned by Australian Motorsport Club Limited under the auspices of the Bob Jane Corporation. The circuit is located north of Adelaide in South Australia on Port Wakefield Road at Virginia, and is adjacent to Adelaide's premier car racing Dirt track racing venue, Speedway City. AIR is owned by the Bob Jane Corporation and run by the Australian Motorsport Club Ltd.
History
Adelaide International Raceway (AIR) was built by Surfers Paradise businessman Keith Williams in 1972. Williams also owned the Mallala Race Circuit and Surfers Paradise International Raceway. Williams owned the track, which remained in an almost 'raw state' until purchased in 1982 by the Bob Jane Corporation.
The race track can be used in four different configurations. The full circuit is , the short circuit is , the Speedway Super Bowl is , and the drag strip is long. The track is dominated by its long main straight which is also the drag strip and the front straight of the Super Bowl. As it is a drag strip, the front straight of the circuit is wider than the rest of the track. Like most Australian circuits at its time of construction, AIR raced and still races clockwise, though the Super Bowl, with speedway meetings and NASCAR races in the 1990s, is the only part of the circuit to run state or national championship races anti-clockwise.
Both the Speedway Super Bowl (more commonly referred to as "The Bowl"), and the Drag Strip have the capacity to run night meetings due to the lights that run around the Super Bowl and down the circuits main straight. The spectator viewing areas extend from the final turn and all the way down the main straight. There are also spectator mounds from turn 3 around to turn 6, and then from the outside of turn 7 (the bowl) and all along the back straight. The proximity of the final turn of the bowl to Port Wakefield Road means that spectator mounds can not be placed there.
Starting in 1994 with the removal of the old stands along the main straight and replacing them with spectator mounds, upgrades have been made through the years in a bid to bring AIR back to being a regularly used national motor racing venue. The old timing tower and VIP facilities were pulled down and replaced with several new buildings and a paved VIP area for corporate sponsors was added. A spectator mound and a small, uncovered grandstand, located on the infield of the Super Bowl directly behind pit lane, have also been added in recent years.
Adelaide International Raceway also raced top level motorbike racing. Series that utilised the circuit included the Swann International Series featuring riders such as Graeme Crosby, who won the 1980 series race, and Gregg Hansford. There was an annual 3-Hour race held at the circuit until the mid-1980s that was televised nationally on the ABC, but once the covenant was lifted on the Mallala Raceway, safety concerns about the Super Bowl having no runoff area on the outside of the track (from the entrance to the Bowl until end of the main straight, approximately , the outside of the track was all concrete wall with zero runoff, though tyre bundles were placed on the inside of the wall around the final turn onto the main straight) saw bike racing move to Mallala instead. AIR continues to run bikes in drag racing with Top Bike and Pro Stock Motorcycle both being regulars at drag racing events.
Circuit racing From 1972 to 1988 the Adelaide International Raceway was South Australia's major motor racing circuit, due to a covenant placed on Mallala preventing any motor sport activities there (the covenant had been done away with by 1982). AIR regularly hosted rounds of the Australian Touring Car Championship and endurance races of the Australian Manufacturers' Championship (later known as the 'Championship of Makes'). The Adelaide track also hosted rounds of the famous Tasman Series, the Rothmans International Series, as well as other CAMS sanctioned national championships, including the Australian Drivers' Championship, Australian Formula 2 Championship, the Australian Sports Car Championship, Australian Sports Sedan Championship, and the Australian GT Championship.
With six of the full circuits nine turns being right handers, those being turn 1, which was also the hardest braking point of the track after the fastest cars such as Formula 5000's regularly reached speeds of over on the long straight (by 1988 the turbocharged Ford Sierra RS500 touring cars run by Dick Johnson Racing were reaching ), and the sweeping turns 2 and 3, plus the high speed bowl section, gave Adelaide International a reputation for being hard on tyres, specifically the outside (left hand) tyres which generally took a hammering through the long turn 1, 2 & 3 right hand sweeper and also on the turn 9 bowl. This was due to the longer periods of high speed cornering with the cars and suspensions loaded to the outside. For the longer national championship races, such as the 40 or 60 lap ATCC races and the end of year 125 lap touring car endurance race, this made tyre choice and suspension settings a critical part of success at AIR. Dick Johnson noted during practice for AIR's 1988 ATCC round that after the 60 lap race even the lighter and significantly slower Gemini's would be suffering with worn tyres.
AIR also has an unusual set up for the Pits. While the pit lane is located on the inside of the track coming onto the main straight (cars enter pit lane at the end of the Super Bowl's back straight), the cars actually enter the track from the paddock through the pit gate on the outside of the track at the end of turn 9 (the gate is closed and forms part of the outside retaining wall during races). This means that the main paddock for AIR is located on the outside of the main straight behind the officials tower and spectator mounds. This is despite there being an open and unused area of approximately 21,500m2 located within the Super Bowl behind pit lane (one reason for this was so as to not obstruct the viewing from the pit straight spectator stands and mounds from which the entire circuit could be viewed, though binoculars are usually needed to see the far end of the circuit which is almost away from the start/finish line).
The outright lap record for the full circuit is held by Australia's Formula One World Drivers' Champion Alan Jones at 49.5 seconds. Jones set the record during the 1977 Rothmans International Series driving a Lola T332-Chevrolet Formula 5000. Jones also holds the GT lap record of the circuit with a time of 51.7 seconds while driving a Porsche 935 in the 1982 Australian GT Championship. Circuit owner Bob Jane also holds an AIR track record, co-holding the Sports Sedan lap record with former local driver John Briggs with a time of 54.1 seconds set in 1981. Both drivers set the time in the same race on the same day, with both driving a Chevrolet Monza. Jane's DeKon Monza was built and prepared by Norm Beechey's former mechanic Pat Purcell while the Briggs Monza was built by Adelaide-based K&A Engineering.
The lap record for the , 7 turn Short Circuit is 43.9 seconds, jointly held by Mark Trengrove in a Formula 2, and local Adelaide Sports Sedan driver Mick Monterosso. To set his lap time, Monterosso drove the Adelaide built (by K&A Engineering) Group A, Group C and IMSA specification Veskanda Chevrolet sports car used by John Bowe to dominate the 1986 Australian Sports Car Championship. The Veskanda is generally regarded as Australia's fastest ever race car.
Speedway Super Bowl In the early 1970s, and following the American NASCAR influence which at the time was drawing record crowds, paved short track speedway was becoming popular in Australia (for many years dirt track speedway already had a big following) and with the Speedway Super Bowl, Adelaide a ready made track. Compared to the now closed long Liverpool Speedway in Sydney and the Tralee Speedway in Canberra, the Super Bowl is a true ½ mile ( track, fast and with room on the almost 180m long straights for cars to reach higher speeds. The Super Bowl's longer than 220m turns are banked slightly at approximately 5°, making cornering faster, with the exception of turn 1 for running clockwise on the Bowl which is generally flat - necessary due to the front straight also being the drag strip, the main straight of the road course and the usual exit of pit lane. The turns of the bowl being banked made turn 7 of the full circuit (turn 5 on the short course) more than slightly off-camber as cars entered the Bowl which saw numerous top drivers spin there over the years including Graham McRae, Frank Matich, David Hobbs and Allan Moffat.
The Speedway Super Bowl held winter race meetings and was first used on 16 June 1974 when a large crowd or around 10,000 turned up to see competitors from Rowley Park Speedway drive on the new asphalt speedway. It quickly became apparent that cars built for the dirt track speedway were out of their depth on the ½ mile Super Bowl, with the Modified Rods (Sprintcars) reaching over on the straights when they were only used to about on dirt. Sedan driver Jim Curnow was knocked unconscious when his Holden Torana hit the concrete retaining wall and chronic Understeer was the biggest complaint of almost all drivers with cars generally being set up for dirt and not asphalt. Some sedan drivers then started building cars that were suited to racing on the Super Bowl with a space frame chassis, well tuned V8 engines and wide slick tyres (such as those which were racing successfully at Liverpool) and these cars quickly dominated. The problem was that there were too few of them with some races only having five or six competitors. Most drivers eventually decided it was more fun racing on the dirt at Rowley Park and with crowd numbers dwindling to around 2,000 due to both the tracks location ( north of Adelaide) and the dwindling number of competitors, speedway meetings stopped being held after 1976. Speedway Super Sedans did return to AIR in the late 1980s for some daytime meetings, however crowds were down.
In an ironic twist, when Rowley Park ceased operating in April 1979, Adelaide's new speedway venue Speedway Park (now called Speedway City), was opened adjacent to AIR in October 1979, the crowds returned despite the same travel time to get there as for AIR.
From 1990, the Super Bowl became a regular and popular short track venue for AUSCAR and NASCAR racing during the 1990s, with crowds of up to 15,000 attending the annual Adelaide round of the Australian Championships. The Super Bowl was, and still is the only race circuit still in operation in Australia other than the Calder Park Thunderdome where the race cars can run on a paved oval track, with both tracks currently owned the Bob Jane Corporation. The outright lap record for the Super Bowl of 22.7012 was set in a NSACAR by Terry Whyhoon driving a Ford Thunderbird during the 1997/98 Goodyear Australian SuperSpeedway Series.
The fastest qualifying and race laps set during speedway meetings was set in 1976 by John Hughes (later the founder of World Series Sprintcars) driving a V8 powered HJ Holden One Tonner ute chassis covered by HJ Monaro bodywork. His times were 23.8 for qualifying and 23.2 seconds race lap, which were not much slower than the more powerful (with 20+ years of engine, tyre and suspension development) NASCAR and AUSCAR times set during the late 1990s. Indeed, Hughes' qualifying time of 23.8 in 1976 would have placed him 8th on the NASCAR starting grid for the SuperSpeedway Series meeting some 22 years later (the two categories both raced anti-clockwise).