Roland’s View: How to expand the Supercars calendar for 2025

There’s no doubt that the formation of the 2025 Supercars calendar is well and truly underway in some dark room at HQ. However, judging by the inept construction of this year’s offering, some help is needed. Here it is.

The expansion of the calendar to 14 events is, for me, a given. It simply has to happen, especially in the light of media negotiations that are, presumably, going on in the background for 2026 onwards. I believe this increase is generally accepted by all stakeholders and would, after all, only take us back to the status quo of 20 years ago when there were 13 Championship events plus the Australian Grand Prix support act; 14 in all.

But adding more race meetings must be done in conjunction with the teams, whose rights are protected by the Teams Racing Charter, the TRC. So, a deft hand will be needed as well as some new ideas to help take everyone on the journey.

The starting point for the calendar has to be that the following venues are included, although one or two might be subject to contract:

Albert Park (AGP), Taupo, Perth, Darwin, Townsville, SMSP, Bathurst, Gold Coast and Adelaide. That’s nine, on the basis of avoiding the debacle of a second visit to Bathurst.

Then there’s either Sandown or The Bend for the 500. Ten.

Symmons Plains fully deserves to be on the calendar, but it certainly doesn’t deserve to be there in August. Given the need to get over the ditch in April for Taupo, the trip to Tasmania should be in November between the Gold Coast and the finale on the streets of Adelaide. Hopefully Supercars haven’t irrevocably upset too many people in the Apple Isle. Eleven.

Three more are needed, assuming that there aren’t any daft ideas about going to Qatar or the like.

For me, those are; Queensland Raceway, Winton, and Phillip Island. Some folks will moan about the Island on the basis of the difficulty of getting a crowd, but it looks great on television plus both World Superbikes and the SpeedSeries have recently demonstrated that you can actually get a crowd there. Meanwhile, the Winton crowd might not be the biggest, but it’s welded on.

And now it’s time to be smart. QR will either be a season-opener under lights, or should be a late July/early August daytime show – either way it will attract a great local crowd.

For Winton and PI, something different is needed. Real two-day race meetings, not failed, dithering attempts. And these two would be to a ‘new’ format. Actually, it’s not new at all!

It’s time to go back to the future and adopt a variant of the format that helped make V8 Supercars mainstream 25 years ago. Here’s how the weekend would look:

• Strictly two days. Teams travel to the events on Friday and race timings are set so that they can ALL get home on Sunday night.
• Trucks cannot be opened on Friday until interstate teams can realistically get to the venue.
• Supercars on-track running doesn’t start until a 15-minute practice session is held on Saturday afternoon, almost immediately followed by a single qualifying session to set the grid for the first race. Running kilometres are therefore highly limited so that the overall impact of increased kms from the extra two events for teams is minimised as well as more jeopardy is introduced to results. Somebody will moan about the lack of practice running for rookies. Tough. If you haven’t learnt Winton and PI by this stage of a career, it would be a surprise. The Pros outweigh the Cons.
• Meanwhile, support categories, who are also limited to two days to ensure that everyone can set up properly on Friday (an impediment in the past to the execution of two-day Supercars events), have the lion’s share of the track action on the Saturday.
• Sunday is Race Day for Supercars. Three races of approximately 30 minutes duration with zero compulsory pit stops. What you see is what you get, exactly as the standard format was for V8s all those years ago. The AGP showed that it works.
• Grids for Races 2 and 3 would be progressive. You don’t want this every weekend, but for this format, why not?
• There’d be a 90-minute gap between races so that most mechanical or bodywork issues could be fixed.
• No waiting around for ages on the grid. Races 1 and 2 would be roll round and get on with it, whilst the third race of the day would allow some pre-race grid activities.
• In the case of a puncture or weather changes, pit stops would be possible but only with two guns and three people.
• Tyres would be limited to a new set per race at PI, and only two sets at Winton. A pre-marked set could be brought for the short practice session only.
• Reduce maximum performance personnel allowed on site to the absolute minimum including a maximum of two engineers per two car team, one per car.
• Race wins would still be race wins, but there’s only be one podium at the end of the day that reflected the overall points score for the day. Like the old days.

Neither of these venues is going to attract a big corporate crowd, and therefore the non-racing personnel needed would be tiny plus no ‘rides’ would be allowed. Costs would be minimised for everyone.

The addition of two race meetings, using Winton and PI with whatever format is employed, is, of course, going to be more expensive for Queensland teams than Victorian/NSW ones. So, it’s only fair that there would be a two-tier approach to the extra fees contractually due, under the TRC, to teams (given that these would be the 13th and 14th events). These would differ just enough to cover flights, hire cars, and truck fuel.

Personally, I’d be selling this concept to the teams from a ‘no fee’ starting point given the upside for everyone in the increase in calendar size at much reduced cost in comparison with every other event, albeit with a caveat that I’ll come to.

On that basis, a Victorian team would agree to do these two weekends for zero extra fee. The Queensland teams, of which there are four with a total of eight cars, would, as I outlined above, get a fee per car to cover the real difference in costs as a result of being interstate. That would be a maximum of $10,000 per car.

Currently, Supercars is obliged to pay teams $60k per car per event for any events in excess of 12 per annum. A bill of $1.44m per extra event. My suggestion would reduce that to $80k per event and if Supercars cannot make that stack up, then it’s time for them to move on.

However, there should be that caveat I mentioned. The teams and Supercars would agree that Supercars run an open book on these events and, in the case that the gross margin achieved exceeds a predetermined amount, then the excess is split 50/50 between Supercars and all the teams (regardless of where they are based).

That way everyone is incentivised to make these two extra race meetings work.

QED – 14 events.