It's still a bit of a surprise to me that there has been no successor to Around the Houses written by some other motor racing history enthusiast. After all, that book concluded with the 1979 competition year, which is now a long time ago. It's not as though I have any exclusive rights to local racing history.

However, the re-issue of Around the Houses on CD-ROM last year inspired me enough to commit myself to doing the sequel. Provisionally entitled Around the Raceway, it will cover the history of motor racing during the Wanneroo Park (aka Barbagallo Raceway) era, that is, 1969 to date. It is going to be a horrendouly big job, even though racing has been largely confined to Wanneroo Park / Barbagallo Raceway, which opened in 1969.

The Size of the Task

There has been an enormous proliferation. The days when a turnout of 60 cars for a race meeting was considered good are long gone. Today, as many as 200 cars and drivers crowd the paddock. Similarly, the number of categories has expanded dramatically. In Around the Houses I could confine myself easily to just three - racing cars, sports cars and saloon cars - because these three were the only Western Australian Championship categories. Today the sedan car racing category alone is split into several sub-categories, each with their own championship: Street Cars, Saloon Cars, HQ Holdens, Historic Touring cars, Improved Production, and of course V8 Supercars. Sports cars have subdivided into Sports Cars, Marque Sports, Production Sports, and Sports Sedans, each with its own championship. And the former Racing Car category is now occupied by two classes at present, Formula Vee and Formula Ford, although others have come and gone. In the years since 1969, a number of other categories and race series have appeared and disappeared again.

My policy for driver profiles is that anybody who has managed to win a Championship, and anybody who has managed to win one of the big-ticket races such as a 300-km race (popular in the 1970s), deserves a profile. In addition there are "wild cards" - drivers and personalities are so conspicuous, or who are so persistent, or are so entertaining that to omit them would be to lose the flavour of the times. With all these many Championships, and with nearly forty years of racing, it means I have a very large number of people to track down. Possibly as many as 400. Each ought to have a profile, some photos, and an achievements table.

Format

There is little doubt that I will have to publish it as a digital book - a website on a disc. As a printed book, it would run to 600 pages or more - and in colour. For a small market - maybe 500 people would really want it, if I am lucky - the cost of full-colour printing is out of the question for even the most optimistic (or craziest) publisher.

Championships

In the process of research, I have to reconstruct all the Championships from 1969 onwards, and this meant going through all the race results from 1969 onwards. The actual race results I have dug out do date can be found elsewhere on this site. So far, the reconstructed Championship lists are starting to look like this although there are still a lot of gaps to fill.

There are also a number of Championships or near-championships whose status I haven't clarified yet including Road Runners, and the series of historic races held in the mid-1980s.

Only on CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM)?

The end product is likely to be the equivalent of a 500+ page book, with 2,000+ colour photos. And the market for such a book is small. Devout, but small. So it looks like it's going to have to be another E-book, or virtual website on a disc, probably DVD-ROM this time.

Because of the complexity of the categories and championships, it has taken me quite a while to establish a viable structure, but I think I've got it sorted now. However, I don't doubt that I will have to restructure the whole thing again when it's closer to completion.

At present my goal is to have it published well in time for the 40th anniversary of the opening of Wanneroo Park: March, 2009.