After decades of crying out for a dedicated motor sport track, Hunter car enthusiasts now have two under construction on their doorstep.
The start of work last week at Black Rock Motor Resort on a disused mine site in Wakefield, between the M1 Motorway and Speers Point, comes as Circuit Italia owner Matthew Higgins and his team put the finishing touches on their track at Balickera, north of Raymond Terrace.
It is not clear yet how Circuit Italia will operate, and the two private tracks have some significant differences, but the good news for motoring fans is that the Lower Hunter soon will be home to two circuits.
Unlike Black Rock, the three-kilometre Circuit Italia is accredited to host racing. Neither track, at this stage, can accommodate motorcycles.
Black Rock chief executive Tony Palmer said his circuit would cater for club members, corporate days, a driving academy and public track sessions.
"There's three main audiences," he said.
"You're going to have the private people.
"The corporate market is pretty big, the driver experiences. There's 25 brands that do driving experiences in Australia. They're going to be a predominant user midweek.
"Then we've got the public experiences like track days where you can bring your own car to the track.
"It's not a rich boys' club."
Mr Palmer said the public would have access to driving Black Rock vehicles.
"There'll be public track days where you can drive our cars.
"There'll be a whole range of cars and price points.
"They will be from entry-level performance road cars right through to full-spec GT race cars."
He hoped to offer driver training from pre-learners as young as 13 up to motor sport enthusiasts who could be taught to drive safely in a high-powered race car.
"In our experience, we've found a lot of benefit in getting young people into machines well before they get their licence.
"It's a bit like mum and dad used to do in the car park. We want to be a lot better than that.
"We want to give parents the tools to be great coaches and we want to give the kids the confidence of what it's like to handle a car before they get their Ls.
"I think from about 13 on is the time where we can get people into cars, teach them, whether it's manual or automatic, the basics of how to drive."
The Black Rock driving academy will not allow people to step off the street into a high-powered vehicle.
"It's certainly not going to be a rock-up dry hire. It's going to be part of the driving academy," Mr Palmer said.
"You need to work through a couple of levels to work up to that level.
"You're not going to be able to rock up and jump in a GT with no experience by yourself."
Mr Palmer ran corporate driving events at Sydney Motor Sport Park "in a previous life".
He is excited about the potential of the undulating Black Rock circuit, designed by the German Tilke Group.
A video game simulation of the 5.25km track will be released on the Assetto Corsa platform. A simulated hot lap of the circuit shows a Porsche race car reaching speeds of 250 kilometres an hour on the back straight.
"It's challenging from the point of view of vehicle dynamics," Mr Palmer said.
"We don't have a lot of tracks with elevation in Australia, other than Bathurst, which is pretty much the double black diamond of tracks."
He said the safety run-off areas required for motorcycles had ruled out two-wheeled track days.
"It won't be designated for bikes. I know that's going to disappoint a lot of people, but when you get out there and drive around the track you'll realise why," he said.
"It would be an amazing track for bikes, but the problem is we've had to build this within a corridor effectively using the existing fire trail network wherever possible and doing the least amount of clearing possible.
"In order to make it bike-safe, we would have to do so much clearing it wouldn't have been approved."
Hunter motorcycle riders have long been forced to travel to Sydney Motor Sport Park at Eastern Creek if they wanted to test their skills at a public track day.
"The motorcycling community is probably even more passionate and desperate for facilities than the motor car community," Mr Palmer said.
The NSW government is looking for an alternative to the Newcastle East street circuit to host a Supercars round.
Circuit Italia is accredited for racing and has shown interest in hosting Supercars, but Mr Palmer said gaining approvals for racing at Black Rock would be all but impossible.
"Where we're located, and the amount of people we're going to have to service, racing really wasn't right for our business model," he said.
"It is a shame. The reason we didn't go for racing in our development application was the assessment criteria you've got to go through to be a race track is so archaic and onerous, I don't think we're going to see another race track in NSW.
"It gets knocked out at a planning level. We'd love to, but it's almost impossible in the current planning environment, unless the government wants to fund it, which they don't."
Lake Macquarie City Council has highlighted the tourism potential of the Black Rock "resort", which will include a hotel, restaurant, pool and a function centre.
Mr Palmer likens Black Rock to a golf resort.
"I have absolutely no doubt we'll be drawing people from interstate and no doubt we'll be drawing an international audience, if the other Tilke clubs are anything to go by.
"This track has the essence of what makes the great tracks in the world great.
"We have topography that gives us about 160 metres of elevation change over the track, and it's crafted within an establish landscape."
He regards the two new Hunter tracks as complementing each other.
"To me, this is such a great opportunity to have multiple tracks in a region that really, if we do our job right, what could be better than driving two tracks back to back.
"The more the merrier. We need these facilities.
"From the little I've seen it looks like a fantastic facility, high-quality. I applaud them on getting to that stage because I know how hard it is to get these projects up and running."
