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The Australian Drivers’ Championship, also known as the Gold Star, has a long, storied history – but has struggled to find a suitable home for the last couple of decades.
That’s been a direct result of a waning interest in wings-and-slicks racing in Australia.
The latest iteration was the S5000 series, for which Motorsport Australia actually revived the ADC after it had been shelved for a number of years.
With that series now shelved itself, the ADC was set for the same fate – only for the AASA to announce its own plans for a revival of the title.
The plan includes the winner of the Hyper Racing Championship, a AASA-sanctioned series for single-make open-wheel cars powered by 195-horsepower Suzuki motorcycle engines, being crowned the Australian Drivers’ Champion.
Motorsport Australia is the only governing body that can formally crown an MA-approved national champion in circuit racing.
That doesn’t mean the legalities of this play to revive the Australian Drivers’ Championship are clear, though, with little known over the trademark over the name.
MA is understood to have only become aware of it once it was made public and is yet to make public comment.
Interestingly, the AASA/Hyper Racing Championship release doesn’t reference the term ‘Gold Star’, which has long been the more colloquial term used to describe the prize.
The list of Australian Drivers’ Championship winners includes Frank Matich, John Bowe, David Brabham, Mark Skaife, Jason Bright, Scott Dixon, Rick Kelly and Will Power.
They all won titles during the Australian Formula 1, Formula Atlantic, Australian Formula 2 and Formula Holden years which were, by Aussie open-wheel terms, relatively strong.
The prize later went to Australian F3, which largely failed to fire, before it was benched in 2015.
It was revived as a push by MA to foster the new S5000 series, however that too struggled to gain traction and was shut down for this season.
As it stands, Aaron Cameron is the final MA-sanctioned Australian Drivers’ Champion/Gold Star winner.
