Magic Moments Of Motorsport: Calder Classics

A selection of memorable races from Melbourne’s ac­tion track

Calder Park Raceway in Melbourne was at the centre of Australian motorsport in the 1980s and 1990s with its road circuit, super speedway oval and drag racing strip all playing host to top-level motorsport.

On this very special release in the Seven Sport Magic Moments of Motorsport Series we celebrate the rich contribution of this venue to Australian motorsport history with some memorable events that we’ve extracted from the 7 Sport archives.

First up is the Calder Park round of the 1986 Australian Touring Car Championship with Nissan Skyline pilots Glenn Seton and George Fury squaring off against Volvo ace John Bowe.

We also have the opening round of the 1987 Australian Touring Car Championship from Calder which featured the world racing debut of the BMW M3 and resulted in a history-making first ATCC race win for Nissan pilot Glenn Seton.

Fans of the five-litre Commodore and Falcon V8 championship era will also be pleased to see the 1996 ATCC round from Calder that saw Russell Ingall take his very first round win for Larry Perkins and Craig Lowndes debut the Holden Racing Team’s much-vaunted high-tech ‘Supercar’ Commodore.

And as a special bonus, we’ve dug deep into the archives to find the very first NASCAR race held outside the United States on the high banks of the Calder Park Thunderdome in early 1988.

This was a history-making race with a range of top-name American visitors taking on the likes of local stars Dick Johnson and Allan Grice as Australia was first exposed to ‘stock car’ racing.

This is a special release for road racing and oval track racing fans alike!