Some races are about the lap times, some are about the racing.
Last weekend Phil Alexander and John Connolly loaded up the Weekend Australian BMW E30 — a six-cylinder Targa-built car — and pointed it north for the Historic Leyburn Sprints.
Leyburn is a town of about 500 people on the Darling Downs in Queensland. For one weekend a year it becomes something else entirely. This year, its 30th, roughly 19,000 spectators came through, and a record 231 competitors put cars on the grid — the biggest field in the event's history.
The Sprints run on a street circuit through the town itself with the track edges marked out by hay bales, running past the pub, through the town and around the bus depot.
The event is sprint format with cars released at 30-second intervals. With 231 entries and a field that ran from a 1925 Crossley Roadster right through to modern machinery, the variety is half the appeal. Sports cars, racing cars, touring cars, rally cars, road cars there was really something for everyone.
The 30th anniversary carried some weight, because Leyburn's connection to Australian motorsport runs a lot deeper than the Sprints themselves.
In September 1949, an abandoned WWII RAAF airstrip just outside town hosted the Australian Grand Prix — the first one ever held in Queensland, and the first run with a mass start of the whole grid rather than the staggered handicap starts that had gone before it. John Crouch won it in a Delahaye. Around 30,000 people turned up to a town that had 150 residents at the time.
The modern Sprints started in 1996, and because the old airstrip had long since deteriorated, organisers built the street circuit through the town instead. Three corners on the original airfield layout still carry the names of the farming families — Hamblin, Porter and Backhouse — who's land became the track.
For the anniversary, the organisers brought in some serious company. Dick Johnson, Colin Bond, John Bowe and Kevin Bartlett were all there, along with Bruce Allison, Charlie O'Brien, Bap Romano and Steve Masterton.
John also got a run in Andrew Miedecke's restored Group A Mercedes-Benz during the parade — the car from Miedecke's Bathurst debut. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday.
Special mention too to Paul Spiteri, who we race alongside in the RX8 Cup, out there in his Mazda RX3 coup. Good to see a familiar face a long way from home.
The thing that stands out about Leyburn isn't the racing, though the racing is good. It's the town.
The whole event is run with the community behind it, and the proceeds go back into Leyburn — the school, the RSL, the fire brigade, local groups. Locals turn out in numbers. Competitors come back year after year, plenty of them travelling from interstate.
That's a rare thing in motorsport. Most circuits sit well outside town, and the sport happens at arm's length from the people who live nearby. At Leyburn the sport happens in the town, with the town, and it's been that way for thirty years.
