The iconic Auckland quarter-mile dirt oval is poised to host its final race meeting on Saturday, March 22.
The Legends Night will be headlined by Midgets, Sprintcars, and other open-wheel categories.
Before that meeting gets underway, a march will take place from 9:30am NZDT beginning at the speedway’s main gates.
The march will take protesters from Western Springs Speedway on Stadium Road to Point Chevalier via Great North Road and is expected to last an hour.
Auckland Councillor John Watson is expected to speak at the protest. Cr Watson has been a vocal advocate for keeping speedway racing at Western Springs.
The current venue hire agreement between Western Springs Speedway promoters and the Auckland Council expires at the end of March.
The incumbent promoter has expressed they would not continue hosting race meets even if the speedway is saved and a new venue hire agreement was offered.
“We encourage everyone to attend this march and invite others who want to make a stand against Auckland Council’s poor decision making, lack of process, blocking of ratepayer and stakeholder rights to be heard and lack of accountability in this election year,” a Save our Speedway Facebook post read.
“The current promotion’s last race meeting is also taking place later that afternoon. As with every Western Springs Speedway race meeting, we encourage everyone to attend and enjoy our sport at our home.”
Auckland Council voted late last year to consolidate speedway racing activities to Waikaraka Park, which would be given a multi-million dollar facelift to facilitate saloon and open-wheel racing.
That decision has been highly controversial in the speedway community given the near 100-year history of racing at Western Springs as well as a contentious call by the council to vote in favour of the consolidation despite issues over the process.
Cr Watson recently penned a scathing opinion piece in the NZ Herald, where he questioned the legitimacy of Auckland Council’s vote to consolidate speedway racing activity and labelled the decision an “engineered eviction”.
“It has revealed leadership of the very lowest calibre at Auckland Council… where you jack up a deal with shysters in advance, keep it secret from everyone else, spring a sham meeting at the last minute, ignore previous council resolutions, refuse to consult with any of the affected parties whose sport you are undermining – fans and racing clubs alike, deny them speaking rights when they do turn up in person, include biased, misleading and fabricated information in your ‘evidence’ and then threaten them with an ultimatum… all before the meeting has even started,” he wrote.
“And finally, when those very same people have the gall to object you belittle them and use ratepayers money to fight them through the courts. That’s the real Mr Fix-it .”
After plans for a new stadium to become the home of A-Leagues club Auckland FC were revealed on Wednesday, Auckland Council’s economic and development agency Tātaki Auckland Unlimited confirmed it had received three proposals for the future use of the site.
In June, 2024 a tender was opened by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited seeking “Expressions of Interest from organisations and potential capital partners, outlining their ideas for how Western Springs Stadium could best contribute to meeting Auckland’s sports, entertainment and festival needs into the future.”
Alongside the Auckland FC proposal came a pitch from CRS Records to transform the venue into a premier live entertainment, concert and festival venue with capacity for cultural events and community sports.
The Ponsonby Rugby Club, which is a current user of Western Springs, also submitted a proposal to extend its occupancy and expand by redeveloping the venue into a 50,000 capacity concert venue. The Auckland FC proposal would also evict the Ponsonby Rugby Club.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited will decide its preference before consultation with the Auckland public.
Speedcafe sought comment from Save our Speedway but did not receive a reply at the time of publishing.
