For a sport whose image is a bloke with a spanner and a trailer, New Zealand speedway runs on a surprising amount of software. Three pieces of it, mostly.
Your licence lives in an app
Speedway New Zealand runs licensing and race-night sign-in through its own app and the Sporty platform, the same system that hosts most club websites in the country. Season licences, one-day licences and signing in at the gate all go through it rather than a clipboard.
If you are getting licensed for the first time, that is where it happens. Our getting started guide covers the licence types and what each one lets you do.
Every car carries a transponder
At its 2021 AGM, Speedway NZ voted to move the sport off the Dorian lapscoring system and onto MYLAPS X2, the timing standard used across international motorsport. Member tracks have run it since.
The practical effect for a driver is that lap times, positions and race data land in the free MYLAPS Speedhive app, so you can pull apart your own night afterwards instead of relying on what the scoreboard said. For a fan it means live timing you can follow from the bank, or from home. Our live timing page links the platforms.
And the racing gets streamed
The Pits TV provides live video and on-demand replays from meetings around the country, alongside The Pits FM radio. Clubs including Lucas Oil Waikaraka, Wellington and Woodford Glen run their coverage through it. Streams are bought per event rather than by subscription, and not every meeting is covered.
Alongside that there is a genuine independent scene of filmmakers putting race footage up for nothing. We list the ones we could verify on the watch page, credited and linked.
What it changes
Mostly, reach. A regional driver from Invercargill is as findable as one from Auckland, and a grandparent who cannot get to the track can still watch the meeting. For a sport spread across 29 venues from Whangārei to Invercargill, that is not a small thing.
It is worth being honest about the limits though. Streaming is paid and patchy, the timing data is only as good as the transponder, and plenty of clubs still put their most important announcement — whether tonight is on — on Facebook and nowhere else.
Sources: Speedway New Zealand for licensing and the app; MYLAPS on the 2021 move to X2; The Pits TV for streaming.