As the Supercars season settles into its rhythm, I settled down at home in Queensland to watch the racing from Wanneroo. I always enjoyed the trip west, with the generally good racing and normally great weather, but this year it was Kayo for me.
So, what were the overarching takeouts for me from the weekend?
- Generally speaking, the racing might not have been absolute A-grade, but was pretty good with a fair amount of action and strategic plays on foot across both days, although I’ll come back to this later. Unfortunately, good racing didn’t make up for the lack of it, with not only 16 laps less overall racing than a year ago, but only two races rather than three.
- Ford finally turned poles into wins, and the two best drivers on the Blue Oval side of the fence were justifiably rewarded with a W each. With Cam Waters off to the US to race at Sonoma (along with Will Brown) before Darwin, his timing couldn’t have been better.
- Chevrolet would be screwed if Triple Eight switched camps! The Teams’ Championship only serves to underline this, with four of the five Ford teams occupying positions two through to five. That’s not to denigrate the job that Matt Stone Racing are doing in position six, for instance; more it’s a reflection of the drivers, the budgets, and the resources of the top five teams, four of which are running Mustangs.
- The television direction was pitiful and a shadow of what we used to enjoy a few years ago. Use of the very basic timing screen at home (without all the other tools available to a TV director) showed what battles were either in play or brewing. Not only did the director seemingly do his/her best to avoid them, but the commentators also managed to confuse viewers and call the action incorrectly or late. They urgently need someone capable to assist in the background. For instance, when the viewers at home can clearly see four tyres being changed on a car and yet the race callers cannot, something is wrong. And why isn’t split screen technology being used fully? The end of Race 2 was a case in point, where one half could have shown the winner taking the flag whilst the other half would have shown the battle for fifth all the way to the line. I really hope that this is all debriefed properly to improve the offering for Darwin.
- The piece to camera by Neil Crompton before Race 2 from the back of the grid was outstanding. To be able to reel out the pre-race facts and figures without notes and away from the normal Hino Hub environment in that way deserves recognition. The same professionalism was shown in the Mark Larkham piece on Saturday about the rivalry between Brown and Feeney. If the rest of the broadcast was this good, and this polished, then I’d have zero complaints. It isn’t.
- The television offering is not helped, as I have pointed out before, by the world’s biggest totem pole on the left hand side. It takes up pretty much 25 percent of the available screen, I kid you not! Just watch some other motorsport to see how to do this properly. There’s no rocket science involved.
- Ryan Wood is very entertaining to watch, and all credit to him. I love his approach. However, he’s not alone. Much of it was unseen, but Broc Feeney’s climb from 12th to seventh in Race 2, and Matthew Payne’s from 16th to ninth, also showed that the other young guns are giving us great racing. We need more of them, and we need the cameras to follow the action they provide.
- The crowd looked sparse by the standards of years gone by. I hear that merchandise sales reflected that. Supercars management needs to wake up and make changes before the event withers on the vine. The circuit is good, the facilities are good, but the offering was pretty poor, to be frank, with only one Supercars race, that lasted less than an hour, on the main day, Sunday. Let’s be frank, the fans turn up to watch the main show. The support acts are fun but they’re not the drawcard, so a miserly single short Supercars race isn’t much to get excited about. No wonder fans aren’t showing up. Imagine how well this format will go down in Tasmania in the middle of winter…
- As Paul Morris recently said, the Supercars teams are called race teams. They are not called practice teams. And yet, the Perth schedule gave teams 100 minutes of practice time. Some cars did over 60 laps of practice. Why? Stop asking the teams what they want and start asking the punters. They want racing and they want jeopardy in the results. Almost unlimited practice doesn’t give them either. And the crowd numbers reflect that. From a television perspective, these practice sessions are akin to watching paint dry.
- In my first point here, I wrote that there were strategic plays on foot. There were indeed, but there could have been more. When the (poor) decision was made to have one race per day, rather than three over the weekend, why wasn’t the race distance set at the maximum that the fuel tank would allow? At least another eight laps was possible, and that would have served to test drivers and strategies further. Ten minutes practice, 3 x 63-lap races and fewer tyres would have been a much better use of resources and given both the live audience and the TV-based one far better value for money.
- Supercars, with Gen3, is so close to being a great product in my opinion. And yet, the management appear hellbent on shooting themselves in the foot with some really bad decisions regarding the calendar and formats. With the looming threat, or opportunity, of a new media contract getting ever closer, the very existence of the category in its current form hangs in the balance. It’s a massive deal for everyone involved. In fact, it’s a massive deal for Australian motorsport as a whole.
I’d recommend Supercars do two things right now. Firstly, rejig the format for Tasmania (and Darwin whilst they’re at it) to give those fans that do rug up to go there more racing and less practice and, secondly, get an expanded, brave and exciting 2025 calendar out there as a matter of urgency, as in the next month. That will help give the market confidence. After all, not only has the 2025 F1 calendar already been announced, so has the British Touring Car Championship one as well. Unfortunately, and to the detriment of all in the end, my recommendations will, no doubt, fall on deaf ears.
One thing is for sure, to misquote Einstein; to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is going to end in tears.
By way of an interesting sidebar, the F1 commentary team for the Grand Prix from Imola at the weekend was superb in my opinion. Harry Benjamin and Karun Chandhok replaced David Croft and Martin Brundle for this GP. Benjamin provided the colour and Chandhok provided the expertise; two distinct and non-overlapping roles. It was refreshing and showed what can be done with an open mind.
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