South Australian-raised Supercars drivers Nick Percat and Tim Slade will take part in a car protest this morning in support of reinstating the iconic Adelaide 500 event.
It was suddenly announced last October that the Adelaide 500 would cease to exist, effective immediately, with the SA government no longer supporting the street race.
That was met with an instant backlash from fans and drivers alike – and three months on, the stance has not softened.
As reported by The Advertiser, the SS Owners Club of SA will take to the streets of Adelaide in cars from 09:30am ACDT.
Percat flew across from Melbourne last night to be on-hand for the occasion.
“Hopefully see a lot of people come out in support of the event,” Percat told Speedcafe.com.
“Obviously everyone is very passionate about it and still want it to be on the calendar. The opposition leader [Peter Malinauskas] and his guys are pushing pretty hard to try to get the support and get that happening.”
Percat, who enters 2021 on the back of a career-best season for Brad Jones Racing, said the unwavering support for the Adelaide 500 to be returned should be telling for “short-sighted” government officials.
“The support of it has actually been pretty unreal,” he said.
“It’s pretty amazing to see how hard South Australia has got behind the event and a lot of people from every other state are also jumping up and down about it, so it is pretty special.
“I guess it really shows how short-sighted the government were in South Australia, thinking that it was just a little race meeting that they had on in February or March.
“It was a lot more than that; I guess they won’t know the full extent of it until we get through the period of when we would have been there and the amount of people it would have brought in.
“It is good to see the passion has not died off – if anything, it is actually probably getting stronger so it is good to see.
“Hopefully everyone [this morning] enjoys trying to make their voice heard a little bit and in a way that is not disruptive and gets good attention.”
Percat, who will continue working with engineer Andrew Edwards in 2021, will be back behind the wheel of his Supercar on February 16 for the Winton half of the official pre-season test.
Discussion about this post