Sandown Shootout confirmed with 2023 Supercars race formats

The Sandown 500 will feature a Top 10 Shootout to finalise the starting grid, as confirmed with the announcement of the 2023 Supercars race formats.

Supercars CEO Shane Howard advised last December that the widely acclaimed return of the 500km enduro would also coincide with a more “traditional” qualifying format after several years of qualifying sprints run with rules of varying complexity.

There are indeed few surprises in the formats for the 12 race events, with 161-lappers at Bathurst and Sandown, and pairs of 250km races at Newcastle, Townsville, the Gold Coast, and Adelaide.

However, the Sydney event is a 200km which will be the only dusk/night race of the season followed by a 140km encounter.

As previously reported by Speedcafe.com, there will be shorter races at Albert Park to accommodate the addition of Formula 2 and Formula 3 to the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix programme, with a 100km affair followed by an 80km and two 70km contests.

The rest of the sprints are trios of 100km races, with Supercars Championship action compressed into two days at Symmons Plains and The Bend, as well as Sydney.

All up, there are 28 races across the 12 events summing to almost 5400km.

All 200km and 250km races have two compulsory two pit stops, with refuelling, while the sprints will have a mandatory two-tyre change.

The exception to the latter is Albert Park, where mixed tyre compounds apply and all four tyres must be changed in a stop.

Top 10 Shootouts will feature at Newcastle, Townsville, Sandown, Bathurst, the Gold Coast, and Adelaide.

Where a shootout is not used, qualifying is a mixture of knockout (Format 2) or single-part sessions (Format 1).

As far as points are concerned, it is again a case of a total of 300 for race wins, spread equally across as many races as there are in the weekend.

Formats for Super2 have also been confirmed and are essentially unchanged.

Supercars Championship formats

Super2 formats