It was announced today that changes have been made to the entry criteria for Supercars, centred around the return of the Motorsport Australia Superlicence, which was set to be axed this year.
Unlike before, the Superlicence will no longer be paired with Supercars’ own much-maligned requirement to race in Super2 before being allowed to race in the main game.
That will allow drivers to forge a pathway to Supercars directly through categories such as TCR Australia, Carrera Cup and Trans Am.
The outcome follows reports by one media outlet that the FIA had intervened in the matter, and demanded change at Supercars, at the request of global TCR kingpin Marcello Lotti.
According to Vohra that is complete nonsense, with the FIA having had no involvement in talks between MA and Supercars over the revised entry criteria.
“I want to be clear about this – there’s been some reporting that the FIA came steaming in with a whole bunch of threats, and the global rights holder at TCR was about to issue legal proceedings in some court somewhere… all of that is untrue,” Vohra said in a briefing with select media.
“Those things did not happen.
“We were aware that there might be some difficulty for the FIA in signing off the Supercars operations manual, with the level of restriction that existed, as a new dynamic exists for 2024, which is TCR becomes an FIA category as part of the FIA world structure. We were aware that at some point, the FIA might look at that and go, ‘That’s slightly problematic that one of our key categories is excluded from the top tier of Australian motorsport’.
“But at no point did anybody make any demands to us. At no point did anyone make any demands to Supercars.
“The only conversations that were had were our internal conversations when we were thinking about that. So I went to [Supercars CEO] Shane [Howard] pretty early on in my arrival as the new CEO, and he and I just had a productive chat around a range of issues and said, ‘What could we do in partnership between Motorsport Australia and Supercars to, maybe, just consider that those issues might exist over there in the ether, but also what are we doing for the benefit of the sport, and potentially has the dynamic change that means that we could re-look at licencing’.
“And the result of that with various conversations at CEO level, and then across the management teams meant that that conversation progressed.”
Vohra also highlighted that Supercars was consistently open to making changes to the entry criteria rather than protecting its Super2 rule.
“I want to get the context right,” he added. “Our driver is the long term health of the sport and driver development pathways. And we’re pleased that Supercars recognises that, as the premier category.
“At no point did they put walls up and go, ‘No, we don’t care. We’re not interested in that, we’re just protecting our interests’. They never said that. And that’s not the nature of our conversations.
“We’re pleased that we were able to move through a process where we’ve got agreement on a points structure pretty quickly.”
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