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Supercars supremo Sean Seamer is targeting having the Sandown primary grandstand filled at 75 percent capacity for next month’s SuperSprint event.
Sandown has returned to the 2021 calendar following the postponement of the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, taking over from the latter’s initial March 20-21 weekend slot.
With the national COVID-19 situation evolving constantly, Seamer is hopeful of delivering as normal an event as possible.
“The focus is on the primary grandstand seating which is currently going to be held at 75 percent, park and ride, merchandising, and other experiences,” he said.
“We’re working through the details of that at the moment but much like with the 500 that we’re opening with at Bathurst, we really want to get back to as much of the full Supercars experience as possible.
“So pushing for pitlane access, for people to be able to move around as much as possible through different areas, and utilising different pieces of feedback from health around use of masks et cetera to enable that.”
The new season will kick off at Bathurst for the Repco Mount Panorama 500 on February 26-28, and Supercars management continues to keep a close eye on the COVID stakes.
“It would be naïve of us to think that we’re going to navigate 2021 without further hurdles and challenges, despite the outlook being much more positive than what we went through in 2020,” said Seamer.
“[For the Mount Panorama] 500 we are fortunate that it is in regional New South Wales so it affords us some protection from the Greater Sydney area which has proven to be problematic, particularly over Christmas.
“Obviously things happen very, very quickly though so we will continue to push forward with plans for the 500 up until such time as we’re unable to conduct the event.
“We proved over the course of last year that on a worst-case scenario, we are able to run TV-only events.
“That would be a worst-case scenario for us, but we are optimistic given the actions that have been taken by the Western Australia, Victorian and in fact the New Zealand governments over the past few weeks, they seem to get on top of these things very quickly now.
“So whilst there is always going to be some level of nervousness, this lovely virus isn’t going to be going anywhere soon unfortunately so we are just going to have to continue to manage it.
“We have proved that we can do it but we certainly wouldn’t want to be putting our people, their partners, their families under the same level of stress as what we had to last year.”
