Supercars looking for new season opener

The Bathurst Festival of Whatever, was a limp 2024 launch for Supercars and it is unlikely to happen again. ANDREW CLARKE spoke with Supercars CEO Shane Howard about plans for a better start to the 2025 Supercars season…

With the unexpected demise of the Newcastle Street Race, Supercars was left to pull together a season opener for 2024 that wasn’t just another round at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Supercars decided to add the Bathurst 500 to the back end of the Bathurst 12-Hour to create the 10-day Bathurst SuperFest.

A crowd of 103,000 is claimed (really?) for the entire SuperFest, but not much of that came on the Supercars weekend, with the atmosphere rivalling that of a test day.

With the poor attendance and lack of atmosphere, Supercars is unlikely to try that again, and instead will work with the mayors who have been calling for an event in the region, and fire up a new street race for 2025, most likely somewhere in the picturesque Hunter Valley.

“Obviously we were blindsided by the issue in Newcastle with the council not supporting us to compete there, but that took a while to play out,” said Supercars CEO Shane Howard last week.

“The council would only consider it if there was a five-year agreement in place, and while we had full support from the Premier and the sports minister, he approved us on a one-year deal as it was outside the budget process for the government.

“He approved us on that basis and provided a commitment to the council that it was full intent to facilitate a longer-term agreement for us to be in Newcastle and support the region.

“Unfortunately, the council wouldn’t support that. That led to us to having to scramble to find an all-alternative event.

“Obviously, with a strong commitment from the New South Wales government, the Premier’s strong preference was to have it in New South Wales and really there are very narrow options there.

“We looked at the opportunity of doing something different, which was creating the Festival of Speed across the two events.

“We knew that we wouldn’t have the numbers that Newcastle would generate and being late into the market doesn’t help. But all in all, we were very happy with the event.

Spectators were sparse at the Bathurst 500 last month. Image: MARK HORSBURGH

“We had extremely strong support from the New South Wales government and fantastic support from the Bathurst Regional Council.

“They’re just very good partners and they wanted it to happen. They thought it would be absolutely great for their region to have a commercial festival span that length of time, and talking to the mayor over the event, he couldn’t have been happier with the result for the region.

“It was a little bit softer than we would’ve liked, but still a very good event.”

Which means the crowds were lower than desired. Howard reiterated a desire to run only one Supercars event at Bathurst regardless of the outcome of the weekend just gone, which means his team is exploring other options for 2025.

With Supercars not tied to rural NSW as reported elsewhere, Sydney Motorsport Park was considered for a night race but, with daylight saving in place, it was decided that to get the full impact from that, the racing would need to be too late.

He added that Newcastle was “no longer an option for us,” but with the ‘kit’ ready to be moved somewhere else, a street race was a likely option, and preferably not too far from Newcastle given the complexity of moving the more-than four tonne concrete walls.

“You never say never, and we’ve had this situation before where a particular council or a particular government entity chooses not to support a race – but things change, just look at Adelaide as an example,” Howard said.

“I think Newcastle was one of the greatest events that we’ve done. It was absolutely spectacular.

“If the option was there, we’d consider it, but we are looking at other options now. I think we’ve had about nine mayors contact us to investigate or consider having a race in their area.

“We’ll investigate them now. I think the government is a very strong supporter and they would appreciate the opportunity to have a major event in that region [rural NSW] for sure.

“We’ve got all the kit. It’s just finding the right location and you can put it together pretty quickly.

“There have been some options put forward for the Hunter Valley but I won’t get into the specifics of them.

“We will certainly investigate those options very soon actually with our engineers and our events department. It could be either a street circuit track or a permanent circuit. We’ll have a look at all options that are open to us.

“Obviously, we’ve got all the kit for the street circuit there, so it makes sense to investigate those options – the street circuits deliver huge economic benefits for the region.

“If we can manage that, that would be our preference – and permanent circuits take a lot longer of course.”

Howard talks about the ‘kit’ and the cost of moving it, which is why he is focussing on areas close to Newcastle. The kit is the racing infrastructure required for a street circuit, meaning the concrete walls and safety fences.

The demise of the Newcastle event was annoying for the accountants. With the cost of the ‘kit’ being amortised over several race meetings, after being moved from Homebush, they were preparing to move the event into profit.

“That would be the right area and certainly our first point of investigation,” Howard said of the Hunter Valley.

“There are a few options there. We’ll have a look at that.”

Several towns in the Hunter Valley could host a round, with places like Cessnock only 150 kilometres from Sydney CBD, and Maitland only 30 kilometres from Newcastle.

The region has a population of nearly 700,000 and endless accommodation options as a centre for tourism.

Technically there are nine local governments in the Hunter Valley ranging from populations of 210,000 to just 10,000, meaning there are nine mayors in the area, but not all with the finances and location to host a Supercars race.

Auto Action also understands Supercars’ engineers and events team have been working on another street race which may be locked away in the next month or two.

There’s lots more loaded into a bumper edition of AUTO ACTION magazine, on sale at newsagents and available digitally here.

For more of the latest motorsport news, subscribe to AUTO ACTION magazine.

Latest Podcast: Hats off to you. It’s the Auto Action Rev Limiter

Hooray, F1 is back. Boo, Max Verstappen wins. The Bahrain Grand Prix was a little underwhelming, but at least there was racing… and scandal. There was plenty of scandel, but we don’t do that stuff apparently, so we don’t talk about Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner and Jos Verstappen.