Supercars has announced a change to the schedule for the Top End event, with Boost Mobile Qualifying for Race 11 of the season moved from Saturday to Friday afternoon.
That session will count as the first leg of the Triple Crown, with a driver needing to also prevail in both the Saturday and Sunday race in order to win the title.
Supercars General Manager of Motorsport Tim Edwards explained, “By moving the Qualifying session to Friday afternoon, there’s something to drive for every day of the event, which is what fans want to see.
“Darwin is one of our marquee events on the calendar and we think this format adds another dimension to the on-track product.”
To facilitate the change, the single, 90-minute practice session which was to have been held on the Friday has been shortened to 60 minutes, with a second, 30-minute practice session added to the Saturday morning, before the Boost Mobile Top 10 Shootout.
Everything else remains the same, including the pair of 137km races, as well as Qualifying and the Top 10 Shootout on the Sunday in order to set the starting grid for Race 12 of the season.
That Supercars has moved to two-race formats for most of its events, and Top 10 Shootouts for most of its races, also goes to explaining why the change has been made.
Until now, the Hidden Valley event has always been run either to a three-race format, or a two-race format which includes a shootout at some point, meaning there were three sessions of obvious importance relative to the others.
However, this year’s format of two races and a shootout for each created an awkward scenario for declaring the Triple Crown, until the aforementioned tweak.
Regardless of format, the Triple Crown, a title first put on the line in 2006, has proven elusive.
It was not until 2019 that it was finally achieved, when Scott McLaughlin won both races and was fastest in the weekend’s sole shootout.
A year later, during the COVID-affected 2020 season when the event featured a multi-compound tyre allocation, it was awarded on a simple ‘round winner’ basis and thus guaranteed to be claimed.
Jamie Whincup came out on top but, ironically, McLaughlin swept the three-race Darwin SuperSprint which was held a week later, and run exclusively on soft tyres.
Last year, the three Hidden Valley races featured as many different winners, namely Mark Winterbottom, Broc Feeney, and Jack Le Brocq.
Friday qualifying is particularly rare for sprint events and, indeed, the only other events on this year’s calendar which feature such a session are the Bathurst 1000 and Adelaide 500, although the Thursday of this month’s MSS Melbourne SuperSprint is comprised of two practice sessions, two qualifying sessions, and Race 3 of the season.
The 2024 Darwin Triple Crown will be held from June 14-16 and is again Supercars’ official Indigenous Round.
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