{"id":905078,"date":"2026-09-25T14:48:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:48:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905078\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T14:48:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:48:39","slug":"how-supercars-can-better-handle-time-certain-finishes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905078\/","title":{"rendered":"How Supercars can better handle time-certain finishes"},"content":{"rendered":"

TIME-CERTAIN finishes continue to be a serious bugbear of Supercars fans, but they can be better handled to reduce grievances in future.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the assertion made on the latest episode of The Undercut by co-host Aaron Noonan, who has called on the championship to better communicate with viewers.<\/p>\n

Supercars currently has time-certainty in place for all races on its calendar other than the Bathurst 1000.<\/p>\n

That is something it is reviewing \u2013 i.e. the possibility of diminishing time-certainty at least for races not bound by free-to-air broadcast window constraints<\/a> \u2013 but nevertheless the point stands.<\/p>\n

Essentially, when for whatever reason (be it Safety Car periods, wet weather, delays\/stoppages) a race encroaches upon the pre-arranged time-certain cut-off, Supercars routinely leaves it to the last minute to convey to fans that the full distance might not be reached.<\/p>\n

That tends to amplify agitations, as Noonan outlined.<\/p>\n

Clear As Mud! | The Undercut<\/p>\n

THE Undercut returns, breaking down the latest news in the world of Supercars racing!<\/p>\n

\u201cMy argument is that (at The Bend) in particular, it felt like to a lot of fans that time-certain gets flicked with half an hour to go \u2013 \u2018oh we\u2019re now going time-certain\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it on the broadcast and on Supercars more to hammer it earlier in the day?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of like if you go to the shop and you go \u2018I\u2019m going to buy a 147-lap race today, I\u2019m buying something for $50\u2019 and then you take it to the cash register; \u2018yep, it\u2019s $50 but actually let me just take a little part off that before you walk out of the shop\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo the race fan, I get that\u2019s how it feels. So if you get it presented earlier from the very start of the race, more often in the race earlier on that \u2018this is not a 147-lap race, it\u2019s a 147-lap race or 5:53pm +1 lap, whichever comes first\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got to be part of the way that it\u2019s portrayed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Aaron Noonan<\/p>\n

He doubled down: \u201c(Fans) feel like it\u2019s \u2018when the race became time-certain, or when they decided to make it time-certain\u2019. That\u2019s totally not the case. It was always time-certain from the minute the supp regs were written in the way that the scheduling is done.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo then the onus is back on the championship, the broadcast, the teams, everybody involved, to inform and communicate to the audience that this is the deal: \u2018Today we\u2019re going car racing and it will be that or it will be that, depending on how it plays out\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that the Dunlop Super2 Series\u2019 2023 move to timed races<\/a> has helped ease previous tensions that would often surface pertaining to the number of laps completed versus the number of laps scheduled.<\/p>\n

Co-host James Moffat<\/a> also made the astute point that Supercars could further help its cause by starting races earlier in order to allow for margin for error before time-certainty kicks in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TIME-CERTAIN finishes continue to be a serious bugbear of Supercars fans, but they can be better handled to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-905078","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\/905078","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=905078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}