The North Island circuit will be the scene of Supercars’ return to racing in New Zealand when the ITM Taupo Super400 unfolds in April, but is this weekend playing host to the Taupo Historic GP.
While the Toyota Formula Regional Oceania Championship arguably headlines the competitive action at this weekend’s Super Sprint Motorsport New Zealand Championship meeting, the bulk of the programme is made up of historic motor racing and demonstrations.
888A-063 might not be old enough to commonly be described as ‘historic’ – it only made its racing debut as the Supercheap Auto wildcard entry at Hidden Valley in June 2023 – but it certainly has history as the first Gen3 chassis to win the Great Race, in the hands of van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway.
Quinn, the largest shareholder in Triple Eight Race Engineering, bought 888A-063 for himself and has now driven it around one of the race tracks which he also owns.
“I loved it,” he said.
“I was really surprised at how easy it was to drive.
“I’ve been giving Shane all this credit for years and years,” quipped Quinn.
“I jumped in yesterday [and] it was good, it was cool, it was a good thing to drive.”
The Red Bull Ampol Camaro is not the only Bathurst winner at Taupo this weekend.
Larry Perkins took out the Great Race of 1993 and son Jack is behind the wheel of that Perkins Engineering VP Commodore, while Greg Murphy is steering the Holden Monaro 427C which he drove to victory in the 24 Hour race in 2003.