APC to finish season with AMRS on new calendar

The MRF Tyres Australian Production Cars series will complete its 2020 season with four more rounds, all on the Australian Motor Racing Series bill.

Sandown hosts the season resumption on August 28-30 before rounds at Sydney Motorsport Park on September 25-27, Queensland Raceway on October 23-25, and The Bend on December 4-6.

The traditional, 300km ‘Fight in the Night’ remains on the Saturday night at Queensland Raceway, representing genuine long-distance running less than a month before a number of competitors are expected to back up for the Bathurst 6 Hour, while the Sunday at the Ipswich circuit will now see a timed, one-hour affair.

The Bend will feature a pair of 300km races, while Rounds 2 and 3 are each set to comprise a quartet of one-hour encounters.

“In these current times, it is so important that we can push forward together and deliver a top-level product to our competitors at an affordable price and for this to happen, new approaches need to be considered,” said Category Manager and Director of Ontic Sports, Iain Sherrin.

“Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures and I am very appreciative of the efforts by the AMRS to support the possible opportunity of a dual-permit format to allow us to create this for our competitors at this critical juncture in our history.

“This is also an important first step in creating a new era for the MRF Tyres APC category. We envisage in 2021 a creative restructure which enables greater input and control from our competitor group and will allow us to grow the category to new heights for the benefit of the entire production car community.”

Expanding on the move away from the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships, Sherrin said that APC’s preference for endurance races was no longer feasible on that programme.

“While we would have loved to remain a part of the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships as had been originally planned, it has become apparent that our endurance format simply no longer fits with the direction in which that series is evolving and we are unable to access the venues, track time and pit garages we wish to under that banner,” he explained.

“One of the reasons we have made moves in recent years to hold our own events is so that we could host our endurance formats and visit particular venues when it wasn’t possible with the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships.

“However, in the current climate Ontic Sports as a company is not in a position to do this currently.”

AMRS Manager, Matt Baragwanath, added, “We are thrilled Iain Sherrin has chosen the AMRS as a suitable platform to run his series and it enables us to unify the production car racing scene at a national level.

“Iain has a deep passion for production car racing, which has been demonstrated by the successful national-level production car series he and his organisation have run for a number of years.

“The AMRS shares some core values with the APC, including an emphasis on competitor satisfaction, providing value for money in terms of track time and ensuring our events are professionally-managed.

“While we are able to provide event operations capabilities, Iain and his operations team will come to our events with a high level of category expertise specific to production car racing.

“By combining our knowledge across these areas, we will be able to host first-class production car races that will be enjoyable for the competitors and entertaining for our fans.”

Australian Production Cars 2020 calendar Revised