{"id":32161,"date":"2025-07-30T09:53:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T09:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/32161\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T09:53:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T09:53:15","slug":"renewed-calls-for-two-day-supercars-race-meetings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/32161\/","title":{"rendered":"Renewed calls for two-day Supercars race meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE never-ending debate about the optimum Supercars event format has sparked renewed calls for shorter, sharper race meetings.<\/p>\n

After trending towards two-race non-enduro weekends in recent years, Supercars opted for a 2025 overhaul to create more entertainment \u2013 a move considered a success by many.<\/p>\n

But there are downsides to the action overload, too.<\/p>\n

Costs, for a starter, involved with teams being on the road often from the Wednesday of race week through to the Monday.<\/p>\n

Some also feel the glut is not necessarily conducive to the generally shorter attention span of the modern-day consumer, with nine or so sessions (2x practice, 3x qualifying, 1x Top 10 Shootout, 3x race) more akin to test match cricket than the catchier T20 product.<\/p>\n

On the flipside, visitor nights and spend are key performance indicators for the governments which tip millions of dollars into funding the various Supercars events on the calendar.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The topic was raised during the most recent Drivers Only podcast.<\/p>\n

Six-time race winner Nick Percat<\/a> voiced an interest in reducing practice or scrapping it altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind it just being a Saturday\/Sunday\u2026 I\u2019m sick of getting to the track on a Wednesday for a sprint event. It\u2019s doing my head in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Brad Jones Racing\u2019s Bryce Fullwood<\/a> highlighted the contrast to NASCAR\u2019s in\/out ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey roll up Saturday morning, unload, race, and then they\u2019re on the road Sunday night,\u201d said the Territorian.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do 36 races a year or whatever it is and we do our 12-13. We\u2019re away for the same amount of days, because I\u2019ve done this with our boys.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur boys are away the same amount of days as the NASCAR teams are to race 36 races, so that\u2019s something that surely from a team\/business point of view, that\u2019s a lot of people in hotel rooms, that\u2019s a lot of pub meals when you\u2019re not at the racetrack and whatever else.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something they could definitely look at, because obviously people are expensive and if we can spend that same money and turn on twice the racing, like far out, how good would that be?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Pic: Ross Gibb<\/p>\n

Fullwood wasn\u2019t totally against the concept of racing on Fridays, as happened in Townsville, but delivered a strong view on practice given the tyre-starved ways of today.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though the new tyre doesn\u2019t maybe wear out as much, by the end of second practice they are absolutely screwed. More screwed than what you\u2019re going to have in a race,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it makes it difficult to do any learning past that point, so you may as well almost delete that next practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re almost at the point now where even though for the fans practices might be an hour and a half apart, or whatever it might be, for us in the garage we don\u2019t have an hour and a half.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time we debrief with the engineers, we come up with some changes, the mechanics still need physical time to put the changes in the car.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I feel like you\u2019re at the point now where if the car doesn\u2019t roll out of the truck that good, you don\u2019t physically have enough to make the changes you need to make to get the thing in the window anyway, so you may as well just get on with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One more sprint round remains this year, next week\u2019s Ipswich Super440, before enduro season commences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE never-ending debate about the optimum Supercars event format has sparked renewed calls for shorter, sharper race meetings.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-32161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}