NEWS that the 2027 Darwin Triple Crown will feature a Friday night Supercars race came with a dash of déjà vu for PremiAir Racing team principal Roland Dane.
The announcement was made Wednesday, in what shapes to be an exciting next chapter for the annual June spectacle.
But, as Dane was quick to point out, we have been here before.
Almost exactly a decade ago, Supercars and the Northern Territory government trumpeted a 12-year event contract extension through 2030 that would include night racing from 2018.
The latter component never got off the ground.
“I feel déjà vu here,” Dane confessed yesterday.
“In 2016 the board, of which I was a part, spoke to the Chief Minister here (Adam Giles at the time) about running night racing, and on the surface of it we all loved the idea.
“The cars look good under lights, we’ve seen that Sydney has worked well and everything.
“The thing that stopped it then, I read something about a change of minister, it was absolutely nothing to do with that – the reason it didn’t happen was because the people in the city who run all the bars and restaurants and clubs said ‘no, this is going to detract from our business’.
“Now hopefully it doesn’t going forward, there’s room for both, but they didn’t want to see the punters that have come from interstate, which includes us as teams playing a role in the corporate side of the afterparty if you like on a Friday and Saturday night especially, they didn’t want to see a night race detract from that.
“So I hope there’s a way of fusing everything together because the idea of night racing is great, as long as you bring some anti-mosquito stuff with you… but I am interested in understanding how the interaction with the town works.
“Because that’s after all why the NT pay us to be here, is because of the interaction with the town – the accommodation, the hospitality and everything – and it is great, the city in the evening is a great venue.”
It’s expected temporary lighting will be sourced beyond the existing drag strip facilities.
Eponymous team owner Tim Blanchard, who raced in the 2018 Sydney night race before lighting at the precinct was improved, is hoping for as bright a stage as possible.
“I think the more lighting the better,” he said.
“I drove in that first one in Sydney a long time ago now; from a driving perspective it wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t any issues, I didn’t feel like there was any safety issues or anything from a racing point of view inside the car.
“Commercially it was pretty hard because you could only see parts of the track and half the time on TV it just looked like headlights were racing, so I think having adequate lighting around the track is probably more for the fans and commercially being able to see.”
This weekend’s Hidden Valley action will all be in daylight hours, with the first of three races to be run this afternoon.
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