SPARE SUPERCARS LICENCES IN PLAY

Supercars brokering new entries for 2020 season – Photo: InSyde Media

Potential new entries for 2020 are being brokered by Supercars, which has suspended the tender process for the pair of licences handed back at the end of last year.

By MARK FOGARTY

AUTO ACTION has learned that Supercars is in negotiations with interested parties to buy the Racing Entitlement Contracts (RECs) given up by Triple Eight and Tickford Racing.

It is understood that wealthy racing patrons Scott Taylor and Peter Adderton are in talks to buy the spare RECs, which Supercars is keen to reactivate to restore the field to 26 cars next year.

After a long-running saga, instead of putting the returned RECs out to tender, Supercars is negotiating with potential buyers directly.

It has declared that the interested parties have until entries for 2020 close at 5 pm on October 18.

According to Supercars supremo Sean Seamer, the current talks on the purchase of the outstanding RECs will play out anonymously.

“There are interested parties that we are engaged in talking to under NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and we can’t disclose who they are, obviously,” Seamer told AA. “So we’re in an NDA process and we’re working through those interested parties and, obviously, they know that the deadline is if they wanted to enter next year.”

If the sales aren’t agreed by the 2020 entry deadline, they could go to the market via tender.

“That is to be determined,” a Supercars spokesman told AA.

Along with GT team owner Taylor – who first expressed his interest in a Supercars entry to AUTO ACTION at the end of last year – and Boost Mobile boss Adderton, there are others looking to buy RECs.

There is plenty of interest because the value of RECs is at an all-time low of around $500,000. At their peak several years ago, they were worth $1 million or more.

Jason Bright’s entry is in the final year of its lease to Matt Stone Racing, which means Bright has to sell it or field an entry in 2020. Supercars RECs can only be leased for two years every five years.

AA understands that Bright is looking at selling his REC if the price is right or using it to run his own team funded by a Super2 aspirant.

MSR needs an entry to continue, and wealthy team investor and TCM racer Jason Gomersall is known to be keen to buy a REC to secure the outfit’s future.

Alternatively, Bright is open to teaming up with a one-car squad to field a second entry underpinned by his REC if a young driver brings the backing to fund it.

BJR will also be looking for a REC if the Blanchard family, which underpins Macauley Jones’ Team CoolDrive entry, decides to go it alone – or, more likely, elsewhere.

AA is hearing that the Blanchards are keen to switch to a Mustang because the sporty two-door Ford is a better fit with the CoolDrive group’s brand image.

Supercars is the major marketing platform of CoolDrive, which has expanded into a wide range of automotive product distributorships.

The group’s marketing is overseen by former full-time V8 racer and now enduro co-driver Tim Blanchard, the third-generation senior executive in the family-owned business.

Boost Mobile’s Peter Adderton tried to buy one or both of the handed-back RECs late last year to set up his own team. Privately, he asserts that his bid was rejected.

However, according to Supercars insiders, Adderton never made a formal offer last year. Boost subsequently switched from Walkinshaw Andretti United to Garry Rogers Motorsport as title sponsor in a multi-year deal.