SURPRISE PACKAGE

By Pete McNae

Shane Brooks tried to stay so far under the radar that even North Korea would have had trouble finding him.

The first-season superstock racer at Nelson's Milestone Homes Top of the South Speedway is no rookie ... he started competing in streetstocks back in 1995, but his appearance on opening night in a superstock was one of the better-kept secrets in the class. Brooks, the 41-year-old business owner of Shane Brooks Contracting, even went to the extent of trying to book a 2am ferry to bring his new purchase into town under the cover of darkness.

“They weren't doing a 2am so I grabbed the last sailing of the night figuring I'd be driving through town about midnight on a Friday,” Brooks said. “Even then, Andrew Farley (one of the Nelson club's infield volunteers) saw 25B on the back of a trailer and went 'hello, what's going on here?'.

The low-key approach pretty much sums up Brooks' approach to speedway – and life in general. He is the epitome of steady as she goes, and his racing is a reflection of that. Some of that comes with having had a few more birthdays than most of the competition, some comes down to the necessities of racing within a budget and the rest is just Brooks – never one for the big statements when actions can do his talking.

His speedway career can be broken down into three broad categories. Growing up with mum and dad both heavily involved, even racing streetstocks alongside mum Carole until the turn of the century, he then moved to Canterbury and took a break from racing. When Carole passed, Shane spent some of the money left to him on his first (and only) stockcar in 2011, a locally built car that was 90 per cent finished. In the decade that had gone since he last raced here, Brooks found he didn't know anyone in his new class and he had to learn by trial and error, gradually upgrading the car year-by-year.

Now he's living out the boyhood goal, racing a superstock out of his home club and taking his place in the field for this weekend's PTS Superstock Stampede, a two-night meeting that has attracted the bulk of the South Island cars and a handful of pretty polished visitors from the north. Racing is from 6pm on Friday and Saturday with the Nelson club's fresh resource consent allowing a return to two-day meetings. There's a bit to work through with the need for everyone inside the gates to be Covid-compliant but Brooks is double-vaxxed and ready to rumble.

“A good weekend will be six races and then being able to load the car back on the trailer,” he says. “I don't think I have the race car to be making big, bold statements; I'm just happy to be a part of it because this was always the goal. Once speedway's in your blood, you never really get away so I always believed I'd have a superstock out there – it just had to happen on my time frame.”

Picking up on the built, not bought theme, Brooks and his crew (brother Blair has been a constant from day one) developed that stockcar from running “scrapyard parts” to become one of the hot rods in Nelson, an immaculate front-runner and proven teams race car. Each season, he would remove a tired or budget bit and upgrade; shocks and springs, engine work, chassis tweaks. Then a big crash at Woodford Glen saw Brooks knocked around when the seat was torn out of its mounting and that prompted a re-evaluation.

“We fixed the car and got back out there but I had the time to think and realised that I was loading the car on the trailer on a Saturday afternoon thinking, 'do I have to do this?' The enjoyment had gone out of it. There was quite a lot of dirty racing and personal stuff being taken to the track and it wasn't fun. And racing speedway on a wage is bloody hard work, don't let anyone say otherwise. I'd loved being part of it as the stockcar class in Nelson shot up in terms of numbers and car quality but it came at the cost of the enjoyment for me.”

The car was parked last season but, behind the scenes, Brooks was looking at superstocks on the market, knowing he could get into the class with an older car and make improvements as he settled in. The owner of his current car was willing to swap for the stockcar and cash and, after some haggling, the Gordge copy-Toyota was on his trailer and being covertly towed into town.

Daylight inspection revealed a car that needed attention to be brought up to Brooks' standards, with a new cage going on thanks to Jared Gray at Broad Engineering while the $3500 ignition system and clutch both burned out, but Nelson's opening night saw Brooks finish all three races on the lead lap, running lap times in the 16.1s range, not far behind Nelson's quickest superstocks. Meeting two was missed when the clutch went as he loaded the car on the trailer while meeting three, in a bigger field, again showed plenty of promise. Brooks likes the way this is going.

“You don't need the newest and the best to run a superstock in Nelson,” he says. “You need to get a good foundation and then get it to hook up and handle and go from there. We know there's more in there but I prefer to sneak up on it and learn from each step we make.”

Some of that improvement will come from the driver. Superstock power, brakes, handling and tyres are quantum leaps, even from a competitive stockcar. “I think it was the tyres that surprised me the most,” Brooks says. “Stockcars run a tyre that's basically a road tyre but a Hoosier makes even a wet, greasy track feel like you have a tonne of grip so you have to adjust how you drive because things can change on you quickly.”

There's talk of a bit of dyno work on the motor and a splash-out on shocks and springs mid-season, then Broad Engineering could be called on for a new chassis at some point down the line. If that happens, Brooks would hope to sell the current car intact and locally to keep building the class numbers. He's not one to run before he can walk, though.

“I know this is an old car but the plan is to squeeze all I can out of it by making changes as we learn what it likes – Phil (Krammer) has done it, Matt (Inwood) has a car that has been around a long time too but we are finishing races and having a good time and building the superstock class without spending crazy amounts. I want to prove that you can run around out there on the lead lap without spending a fortune, that's how the class will grow here because we don't have a lot of deep-pockets competitors.”

Brooks was a big part of the best era of Tasman Thunder stockcar teams racing but is less sure about a Tigers revival right now. He says a goal is to teams race in Palmerston North but that's perhaps impractical in this car and with the class just starting to pull out of the doldrums.

“Teams racing is where it's at, everyone who has done it agrees that it is a different rush from individual stuff but it needs full commitment and we aren't there yet, although we have maybe turned a corner. I'll be 42 in January so the clock is moving on a bit but that is a box that can still be ticked – you know me, I'm not going to start up talking about it unless I think it can happen one day.”

• Shane Brooks is grateful for the support of Blair Brooks, Jared Gray, Broad Engineering, Vertex Lubricants, Tasman Heavy Diesel, Krammer Automotive, Mean Machine, Nelson Car Transport Ltd and Steve Foote at Footprint Designs Ltd.
• This weekend's race programme for the PTS Superstock Stampede also features a huge field in the Cando Fishing Ministock Mania, the Richmond Exhaust and Radiator Specialists streetstock triples, the mighty historic stockcars, backed by Donaldson Civil, plus Saturday's open club champs for stockcars and open racing for the TQ midgets and sidechairs with the production saloons running Friday only.

• As the Nelson Speedway Association is now running under the national traffic light system, vaccine passes are required for all competitors, officials, volunteers, track staff and spectators. Please be patient with gate staff – they are only following rules.

• For those unable to attend in person, the meeting will be livestreamed by the team from The Pits Media. Visit their website at https://www.thepits.racing.org.nz

Photos: Rebecca Connor Maling, BM Photography 

Article added: Tuesday, 07 December 2021