{"id":744784,"date":"2026-06-18T16:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744784\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:06:16","slug":"mark-skaife-backs-central-coast-supercars-race-to-energise-sprint-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/744784\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Skaife backs Central Coast Supercars race to energise Sprint Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUPERCARS legend Mark Skaife<\/a> says a new Central Coast street race is a red-hot prospect that could help avoid future early season lulls.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

MORE: The Central Coast\u2019s case for a Supercars race<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very close with Gosford originally,\u201d Skaife said on the V8 Sleuth Podcast powered by Parramatta Toyota.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the council went into administration \u2013 they merged the two councils, Gosford and Wyong, to become Central Coast Council and they went into administration \u2013 and at that point then, the financials didn\u2019t work for them so we shifted it to Newcastle.\u201d<\/p>\n

A decade on, Skaife declared a revamped Central Coast proposal is \u201cabsolutely\u201d a realistic possibility and indeed could be a means to rejuvenate the front half of the annual schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cNewcastle, 60 percent of the racetrack was on the water which was beautiful. It was tragic to lose that; I can\u2019t remember another time where local council outvoted the Premier and got away with it,\u201d he noted, before turning his attention to the role it would play on the calendar.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it would probably fit in the first third of the series,\u201d Skaife added.<\/p>\n

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

\u201cWe have got finals and the grand final build-up\u2026 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calendar cadence continues to be a gripe with Supercars fans who look at NASCAR, NRL or the AFL with envy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two pre-eminent sports in this country, the AFL and the NRL, have got a great rhythm, said Skaife.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat cyclic nature is a really, really strong part of what latches the customer to the sport each week. There\u2019s a storyline each week and we just don\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow certain things make differences there \u2013 mostly governments, because they\u2019re our sanction fee or stakeholder engagement where you can\u2019t necessarily go against when they want to put it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUPERCARS legend Mark Skaife says a new Central Coast street race is a red-hot prospect that could help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-744784","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\/744784","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=744784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}