Motorsport: Outstanding Kiwi racer Kenny Smith to be honoured at big event

Ken Smith's career will be celebrated. Photo / Michael Craig

Veteran Kiwi racer Kenny Smith's legendary career will be celebrated at the New Zealand Festival of Motorsport at Hampton Downs next month.

Smith, 74, is still one of the fastest drivers around in the Formula 5000 class that will be used at the event.

Smith, who began his racing career in the late 1950s, has been one of the most successful drivers in history - winning a Gold Star drivers award five times.

He will be behind the wheel of his Lola T332 as well.

"The cars are the stars," says David Abbott from New Zealand Formula 5000. "Some of these cars have been driven by legends of the sport. They're big, grunty vehicles that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you hear them for the first time. They're hard to drive but they're ferociously quick. They're way quicker than modern day GT cars even though they're 40 years old.

"We raced at Phillip Island recently and the F5000s were quicker around Phillip Island than the Moto GP bikes. You're talking close to 300km/h on the straight. If you're a petrolhead, it's heaven."

Cars that feature in the Formula 5000 category include some classic marquees like Lola, McLaren, Begg, McRae, March, Talon and Elfin.

HU54, the Interscope car run originally in the US by Danny Ongais, who was known as "The Flyin' Hawaiian". The car was sitting in a museum in the US for 30 years until Smith bought it in 2010 and restored it to its former glory.

Greg Thornton's Chevron B24 is another F5000 car with some serious pedigree. The car's original owner, British great Peter Gethin, beat the might of a combined Formula 1/F5000 field to win the 1973 Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. To give an idea of the pedigree of the field, Denny Hulme was second in a McLaren M23 F1 and James Hunt was third in a Surtees F1 car.

The recently-crowned FIA Masters Historic F1 Champion, Englishman Michael Lyons, will be making the trip from the UK to drive the 1977 Hesketh 308E. Lyons is seen by many as the odds-on favourite to claim the Formula 5000 race. He holds the lap record for the original Hampton Downs circuit which he set at the NZ Festival of Motor Racing in 2014. He was the first driver to go under a minute around Hampton Downs with a time of 59.483 in a Lola T400 HU7 Formula 5000.

The NZ Festival of Motorsport is on January 20-22 with other categories also in action. And classic Formula One cars will be on display.