Rodney Jane committed to Calder Park revival

With the Calder Park Raceway having returned to action over the weekend, AUTO ACTION’s publisher Bruce Williams spoke trackside with owner Rodney Jane.

With stock cars roaring past in the background – signalling the start of what will be a steady process toward bringing back an active raceway – Jane spoke about some aspects that have been integral in bringing back the unique facility, what’s gone into it, and his own family connections to the track.

“I’m really excited and I think it’s quite nostalgic, I haven’t seen NASCAR here for a long time, and it brings back a lot of memories,” Jane began.

“There’s always cynics, but the reality is I don’t really care what anyone says, it’s a family run venue and I grew up out here.

This racing this weekend is the first of many steps to bring Calder back to life

“Its a long road back, and there is a lot of competing interest and governing bodies wanting to build new racetracks and ignore this one that’s 25km from the city! But give it time and we’ll slowly invest back into it and build it back up… we’re invested in getting motorsport back here.”

The next hurdle for Calder is getting the Motorsport Australia track licence, something Jane hope’s isn’t far off.

“We’re on the right path, we’ve got a few more little bits to do and I don’t think it’s far off. That’ll get more racing out here. I’d love to see NASCAR run back here one day, we grew up seeing NASCAR and AUSCAR and I’d love to see it come back.

“It was my dad and my uncle’s dream, and I’d love to see it come to fruition again..not to the scale that it once was before, but just some consistent racing and to see the drags out here and to see the road course running again.”

It’s easy to forget that Calder Park Raceway is a fairly unique venue with its three road courses, an oval and a dragway, and it’s also very close to the CDB making it the perfect and most logical motorsport venue to revitalise.

It’s a slow burning process, but Jane plans to upgrade the facilities over time after all the safety aspects have been ticked off

“There’s not too many places like it, and I guess there’s some similarities to Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the Thunderdome is actually based on the speedway there thanks to Humpy Wheeler (American motorsports executive and businessman – former manager of Charlotte Speedway) who used to work there and gave Bob (Jane) all the designs.

“With three road circuits, the oval track and drag strip, and with the fact that it’s in such close proximity to Melbourne with a decent amount of land, great access and plenty of parking, the aim is to get all that up and running slowly, and just watch it progress.”

Whilst talk is ongoing about putting up a $250 million dollar racetrack in Avalon, Jane and his associates are getting Calder back and running on a sensibly planned budget, spending only where it’s needed in order to breathe life back into what is already a perfectly good and unique motor racing venue.

The National Stock Cars series had a display of NASCAR ,AUSCAR and HQ Holdens on display at the Calder Park petrol station.

“Rowan (Rowan Harman – Calder Park venue manager) and I have a pretty good alignment, I grew up on a farm with a mother that didn’t like to spend a lot of money, and Rowan is a lot like her in that sense.

“For example, our tip truck cost us two and a half grand, and the flatbed truck was about 10 grand, and I think it’s just common sense.

“The venue loses a lot of money so everything we do is out of pocket so we do it on a shoestring and spend where it’s important.

“We’re focusing on the safety first, and after we get the safety aspect right and get the track surface right so the cars can race properly, we’ll slowly start to upgrade the things that matter, facilities for competitors, the toilets, and everything like that. And as we make money, we’ll just plug it straight back in to rebuild it slowly.”

In terms of having Harman as the venue manager, Jane said that that relationship was a bit of a blessing.

“We were blessed actually, John Reiner, who used to work with our family and our business, told me that Rowan was looking for work and we got together.

“I’ve known Rowan since I was a kid out here, and he said he’d love to start and away we went. He really gets the way I think and I’m really proud of the work that he, Brenton, and Ian, and all the guys out at Calder have been putting in.

“They just keep chipping away…the run off at the back straight was supposed to cost us some tremendous amount of money, and he got that tip truck, the excavator and a few guys and got it done in three weeks.

“It’s just that common sense approach, and he gets it. It’s hard to find people that don’t just want to spend big money on racetracks… you know, that fast out the door and not much coming back in kind of thing.

Also present at the track this weekend was Jane’s four children, something that relates back to his experience with his own father. It’s something that he remembers fondly, albeit as an experience that was a slow burning lesson in regard to his own future.

“The kids come to a lot of work things with me, so they get the joy of coming on franchise tours when we’re on holidays,” Jane quipped, “visiting 4X4 shows on their school holidays when we’re selling tyres and wheels, and now they’re back at the racetrack.

“It’s what I did with my dad, he called it the milk run. He took me everywhere he went and I had to trundle along and I sort of wondered what I was doing till I was about 30, and then I realised what he was teaching me!”

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