Wakefield Park will lose a very important part of its progress later this year, following Matt Baragwanath’s recent decision to resign from his position as Operations Manager to spend more time with his family.
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Baragwanath, who is originally from Melbourne, moved to Goulburn in order to take up the job in 2015 while his wife stayed in their hometown.
The catalyst for Baragwanath’s decision came around Christmas, when he spent time with his 21 month old son and wife.
“It’s probably stemmed from Christmas onwards,” he said.
“We had some nice family holiday and things in the off-season, and that certainly highlighted to me that my little boy needs his daddy around home
“So it’s been in the back of my mind [since then].”
The park has taken huge strides in the two and a half years that Baragwanath has been at the helm, and he is being careful to ensure that progress will continue once he has left permanently.
“The BAC (Benalla Auto Club, who own the circuit) are very committed too us doing a very important transition and very strong transition properly between a new manager and myself
“The recruitment process will be stringent, and I’ll certainly assist with that.
“Together with the CEO, we’ll do some training and mentoring of the new person and make sure they’re up to speed before I exit the venue.”
Out of everything that he has achieved at Wakefield Park, Baragwanath struggled to name what he was most proud of.
“Certainly the Superbike Series returning back to Wakefield after many years was one of my key achievements,” he said.
“That was something which was negotiated specifically by myself and our CEO for them to return, and that would absolutely be one of our key achievements.
“Venue improvements that we’ve done all around the venue … track safety upgrades … having a team which is cohesive as opposed to everyone pulling in separate directions.
“Key stakeholder relationships would be another key achievement. We have a very important relationship with the council, police, state and federal governments which need to be a maintained relationship, and unfortunately prior to my start those relationships had been pretty seriously diminished.”
Baragwanath does not yet have any plans for work when he returns to Melbourne, as he is focused on the next few months as he transitions away from Wakefield Park, however he did say that “I’d love to stay in the motosport game if I could.”
