Wellington 500

The Wellington 500 was a 500 km (310 mi) street race for touring cars which took place at Wellington City in Wellington, New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s. The 1987 event was a round of the 1987 World Touring Car Championship.

The final running of the race was in 1996, a non-championship sprint event for teams from the Australian Touring Car Championship.

The race was first proposed in 1984 and first took place a year later, albeit with a different layout from that to the original proposal. Initially dubbed the Nissan Cue 500, the first event in 1985's title was changed at the last minute to the Nissan Sport 500 due to Cue Magazine's demise in the week preceding the event. The following year Mobil became a naming sponsor and the Nissan Mobil 500 name was born.

The Nissan Mobil 500 was actually a two-event series with the first round being held at the Wellington Street Circuit and the second at Pukekohe Park Raceway south of Auckland, known as the Pukekohe 500. The event was run to the Group A touring car regulations of the time. Despite the event name, the distance was on occasion less than 500 kilometres due to the slow average speed of the circuit.

For the first race in 1985, the FIA delegate who inspected the Wellington Street Circuit was 1960 Armstrong 500 winner John Roxburgh from Australia. He voiced serious concerns about the narrowness of the circuit as well as safety and the circuit did not pass inspection. For the race to be able to go ahead the promoters had to re-write the regulations turning the event from an international race to a national race, thus eliminating the need for FIA approval.^{[citation needed]}

In 1987, the Nissan Mobil 500 Wellington Street Race was a round of the inaugural FIA World Touring Car Championship. The WTCC lasted only one year and was a victim of its own Group A rules. Both the factory backed BMW Motorsport (Schnitzer) and Ford (Eggenberger) teams were disqualified from some races for technical infringements. Also, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone had been given power over the WTCC at the last minute over the original organisers, the NZ based Strathmore Group. Ecclestone imposed a US$60,000 registration fee per car which saw only a small number of cars eligible for championship points. With some races decided by stewards hearings, the WTCC generally descended into a farce by the end of 1987 and the series was not run again in 1988. An Eggenberger Ford Sierra RS500, which had been disqualified from the 1987 Bathurst 1000, won the 1987 Wellington 500.

Despite the WTCC's demise, the race maintained a point of interest for international teams and drivers in the years following the WTCC event with the popularity of the Group A regulations. The 1988 event was a part of the inaugural Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship. Schnitzer Motorsport dominated the event in this period, winning four consecutive times for BMW. With three different co-drivers, each of these were won by Emanuele Pirro who became the most successful driver in the event's history.

Following the end of Group A regulations, a combined Super Touring and production formula was used in 1993 and 1994. The 1993 event was the final 500 kilometre race held, with sprint races used in 1994 and 1996. The 1994 event was again held as a round of the Asia-Pacific Touring Car Championship which was run for the second and final time. After no event was held in 1995 due to a lack of funding, the circuit was used for a final time in 1996, as a non-championship event for the teams of the Australian Touring Car Championship who had moved to Group 3A Touring Cars regulations in 1993. Twelve cars competed in the event, as part of a two-event series in New Zealand which also included races at Pukekohe. The format consisted of three short sprint races, and the overall winner was John Bowe for Dick Johnson Racing.