SUPERCARS legend Mark Skaife says a new Central Coast street race is a red-hot prospect that could help avoid future early season lulls.
Skaife hails from Wyong, not far from the picturesque Toukley region which has been billed as a top candidate to belatedly replace the Newcastle 500 event of old.
MORE: The Central Coast’s case for a Supercars race
The five-time champion has experience to draw on when it comes track design/planning, thanks to his iEDM affiliation, and he is sure that the Central Coast and Wollongong would both make for stunning options.
“We were very close with Gosford originally,” Skaife said on the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Parramatta Toyota.
“So, before Newcastle came on-stream (in 2017), James Warburton and I had basically done a deal with the Central Coast Council to have a race in Gosford.
“But the council went into administration – they merged the two councils, Gosford and Wyong, to become Central Coast Council and they went into administration – and at that point then, the financials didn’t work for them so we shifted it to Newcastle.”
A decade on, Skaife declared a revamped Central Coast proposal is “absolutely” a realistic possibility and indeed could be a means to rejuvenate the front half of the annual schedule.
“Newcastle, 60 percent of the racetrack was on the water which was beautiful. It was tragic to lose that; I can’t remember another time where local council outvoted the Premier and got away with it,” he noted, before turning his attention to the role it would play on the calendar.
“I think it would probably fit in the first third of the series,” Skaife added.
“We have got finals and the grand final build-up… Perth will energise the start of the year when that comes on-stream, but we have got to energise the Sprint Cup and probably have some more things to play for within the Sprint Cup.”
Calendar cadence continues to be a gripe with Supercars fans who look at NASCAR, NRL or the AFL with envy.
“The two pre-eminent sports in this country, the AFL and the NRL, have got a great rhythm, said Skaife.
“That cyclic nature is a really, really strong part of what latches the customer to the sport each week. There’s a storyline each week and we just don’t have it.
“To be fair, we have tried, even way back to when we sold the business to Archer, Tony Cochrane and I at that point were talking about 18 events in 40 weeks. We were trying to basically do this thing where it was almost every second week.
“Now certain things make differences there – mostly governments, because they’re our sanction fee or stakeholder engagement where you can’t necessarily go against when they want to put it.”