The Newcastle 500 has been cancelled for 2024, city mayor Nuatali Nelmes has confirmed.
Cr Nelmes revealed the news on ABC Newcastle radio this morning, saying that Supercars CEO Shane Howard had called to tell her that the category has opted for a back-up plan for the 2024 season-opener, understood to be Bathurst.
UPDATE: Supercars not giving up on Newcastle
The development comes after Premier Chris Minns yesterday called on Newcastle City Council to make a decision on entering into a contract or otherwise for the event next year.
The New South Wales Government is offering an interim, one-year deal for 2024 due to a budget ‘black hole’ but, according to the Premier, is already in talks with Supercars about a new five-year deal also.
Notwithstanding that she has previously declared the Newcastle 500 “very successful” for the city, Cr Nelmes now says she has fallen into line with the local state MP, Tim Crakanthorp.
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He has expressed his opposition to the event in recent months, due to a survey which found that a majority of residents were opposed to a new deal for the event.
“An event of this size and scale would have to be supported by local state MPs for it to ever go ahead, so the decision really does rest with the NSW government,” said Cr Nelmes on ABC radio.
“Tim has come out quite clearly not supporting the event [following] the consultation that we have done in his particular area and we absolutely respect … his decision.
“And there is no way we’ll be going ahead with an event of that size and scale when your local state representatives don’t support it.”
As previously reported by Speedcafe, that consultation appeared to include some anomalous responses and did not exclude the possibility that individuals had responded multiple times to the online component.
In any case, the Labor state government continued to support the event while the local government, which features a Labor majority, refused to entertain the one-year offer for the stated reason that it was not consistent with the five years upon which the consultation was predicated.
Yesterday, Premier Minns called that stance “nonsensical”.
The contract for the Newcastle 500 would have been a tri-party agreement between the state government (through the Destination NSW tourism/events agency), City of Newcastle, and Supercars itself.
The announcement from Cr Nelmes does not necessarily rule out the return of the Newcastle 500 in 2025 and beyond.
However, she stated that would also be dependent on the local state MP’s stance.
“At this point in time, there is no agreement with the New South Wales government and the local state MPs that represent all of us here in Newcastle in this region, in the state parliament,” Cr Nelmes remarked.
“They would have to have some agreement before we would even look at anything in the future.”
Ironically, she could become the state MP in the not-too-distant future.
Crakanthorp is under investigation by NSW’s anti-corruption commission over non-disclosure of family property holdings and could be expelled from the Labor party, pending the outcome.
Nelmes is considered one of the favourites to win pre-selection/endorsement in what has generally been a safe Labor seat, while Deputy Lord Mayor Declan Clausen would likely take her place if she were elected to state parliament.
Cr Clausen is, however, currently a representative of Ward 1 under Newcastle’s council ward system, which is where the Newcastle East Street Circuit is located, and hence the event was also politically risky for him.
The Bathurst back-up plan, as revealed by Speedcafe, would entail combining the 12 Hour with a Supercars event.
It is understood that would mean elongating the event to a 10-day ‘festival of motorsport’ in order to ensure that Mount Panorama is not oversubscribed per state legislation restricting it to five full track closures per year.
