The Historic Racing Car Club Queensland ('HRCC') held its Historic Queensland event on the weekend of the 5th and 6th July 2025 at Queensland Raceway, WIllowbank (Ipswich) QLD. HRCC's program was replete with all forms of historic motorsport categories and Groups, and for the first time this also include motorcycles. A major feature of the event was the Formula 5000 race cars that took part along with some other great motorsport machinery such as the BMW M1 from the Bowden Collection.
Group Nd were invited to participate once again. On this occasion the Group Nd cars were running in a super sprint with Group U (Historic Sport Sedans), Group A&C Heritage cars and other sports sedans. All up a pretty elite field of some 16 cars would take to the track for an eight lap super sprint around the "National" circuit of Queensland Raceway. Practice on the Saturday ran for 13 minutes and four super sprints were completed after that across the weekend. It was an absolute pleasure to share the track along with these others groups, and all competitors showed each other great sportsmanship respecting the various capabilities of the range of cars. In addition to this we also had a Group Nd car (R31 Nissan Skyline) participate in the regularity timed trial.
Of the Group Nd cars in the super sprint, the front running cream coloured and hard to beat VC Commodore 308 took a pretty solid lead across all four super sprints and was even contesting for track placings with some of the cars from the other groups. The two 2.0litre cars, Ford Escort RS2000 and the Triumph Dolomite Sprint provided spectators with arguably the closest battle of any group all weekend. At the end of the weekend only 0.1 or a second separated these two cars and with each of the competitors also crossing the line ahead of each other in subsequent super sprints. The photo below of the two cars in Turn 6 best captures how close these cars were - kudos to the two drivers who thoroughly enjoyed the competition and camaraderie.
With only a small number of entrants there were no trophies for the sub group this weekend; but it didn't matter all the same! Group Nd was certainly a winner in its own right. Plenty of folks came from far and wide (including New Zealand) to talk with us about our formative group and the regulations we are developing.
Some elite company - Group Nd cars competed in the Group U and Invited Super Sprints
Getting some warmth into the tyres - the entire field with Group Nd cars towards the rear
Hard to beat - leading Group Nd car - 308 VC Commodore
R31 Nissan Skyline - Group Nd car competing in Regularity Time Trial
Ford Escort RS2000 - most likley this will become a 'go-to' model for competitors joining Group Nd and this little car proved why over the weekend
Incredibly matched and reinvigorating class wars - the Triumph Dolomite Sprint leads the Escort...this time!
With only 1/10th of second between many photographers captured these two cars closer together than many others across the weekend
The Escort leads this time!
Triumph Dolomite Sprint catches the afternoon sun of a weekend filled with glorious weather.
