Formats have been a hot topic at a number of points this year, from the action-packed sprint races at Albert Park early in the season, to some fascinating strategic outcomes in Townsville and Sydney more recently.
What has emerged as a less popular format, however, is the SuperSprint format, with two races that feature no refuelling and a single mandatory tyre stop.
Race formats for 2024 were largely locked in before Edwards took on the GMM role, which means the 2025 season is the first where he’ll be heavily involved in how race weekends play out.
And that planning is well underway, Edwards telling Speedcafe that he has taken plenty of driver feedback on board as he and Supercars management assess their approach.
He also dropped a handy hint as to what that approach may look like by highlighting an issue with formats that are repeated day-on-day.
“I listen to all [the driver] comments, and I’ve also got my own views,” Edwards said.
“We’ve got an approach for next year that we’ll roll out in the coming months. But yeah, I do take all their comments on board.
“One of the challenges is that we’ve come from Townsville and Sydney having cracking races, but those circuits themselves always provide great racing. It’s the type of circuit they are, it’s how the circuits treat the tyres, there’s a whole host of things that come into it.
“One of the things we’ve learnt from this year is that we’ve had some weekends where the Sunday race has been a lot less interesting than the Saturday race. And, I think, that’s a feature of if you have identical formats both days.
“Everybody goes into Saturday’s race rolling the dice on what they think the best strategy is. Then on Saturday night they’ve got 24 examples of what worked and what didn’t work, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out what worked.
“And guess what happens on Sunday? You see less deviation in strategy, because everyone has learnt from Saturday.
“That’s something we need to take into account.
“But it’s been good listening to all the drivers and getting their feedback and we’ll take all that into consideration over the next couple of months when we start rolling out the formats that we’re looking at for next year.”
Edwards added that the formats conversation is part of a wider assessment of how Supercars will look next season, which includes factors such as the calendar and the new development tyre that’s in the works.
“We’re working on it all,” he said. “We’re working on calendars, we’re working on formats. They all interlink.
“The new tyre that we’re testing, that also interlinks into the type of racing we do as well.
“All of these subjects feed into what’s the best possible show for us next year. You can’t do one of them in isolation, you need to do it all together. And that’s what we’re working on at the moment.”
Discussion about this post