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Supercars drivers and team managers have almost unanimously shown support for more night racing at Sydney Motorsport Park after last weekend’s Sydney SuperNight.
Round 7 of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship was the first night race of the season, with previous venues that have previously held night events such as Barbagallo Raceway in Perth running day races this season.
While widely praised by drivers and fans alike, there was a near uniform agreement that tweaks need to be made to the format, with wide support for more racing at night.
The criticism centred around the arrival of the teams at the Eastern Creek venue on Thursday, yet with no on-track running until Saturday.
The Saturday morning running also meant that teams went into that evening’s Race 18 of the championship without having run the new Gen3 Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro at night.
While in hindsight it was a non-issue, the lack of night running ahead of the Saturday race was notable given the reduced vision highlighted by drivers for the Gen3 Supercars earlier this season.
In Friday’s press conference, team managers including Shell V-Power Racing Team’s Ben Croke suggested that Friday evening offered an opportunity for at least a practice session for teams – and an opportunity to bring fans through the gate.
That was echoed by drivers after the Sunday race, with the tight turnaround times for team crews also an issue.
“I like the format. I like the night racing. I think it’s a really cool spectacle,” said Mobil 1 Optus Mustang driver, Chaz Mostert.
“You know, every time we race here, it’s probably the most amount of people I’ve seen an SMP since I’ve been coming here for 10 years.
“I feel still that we haven’t quite got the night racing correct; we should be really racing on a Friday night, Saturday night. If we can’t do that, then we should really be racing on Saturday night, Sunday night,” he added.
Will Brown, second the standings in the Coca-Cola #9 Camaro, had similar sentiment to Mostert, suggesting more two-day events across a season.
“I think it’d be really cool to condense it down. I think people aren’t as interested in practice and that it’s like what, you know, I guess the NASCAR guys roll up and race,” Brown said.
“It’d be cool to do to Saturday-Sunday events, potentially but do more of them … 15 or so rounds a year where we’re actually racing more, it’s on TV more and, you know, we get to showcase ourselves more.
“I think that’d be a lot better; roll up Friday afternoon race Saturday, do Sunday and then do it from there. But who knows if that’s actually cost saving that much or don’t want to make those decisions.”
Brad Jones, team Principal of Brad Jones Racing which saw Andre Heimgartner perform strongly in the #8 R&J Batteries Camaro across the Sydney weekend, was also a supporter of a revised format.
“It’s just crazy that I’ve been here for a week,” Jones said on the Sunday evening. “But it’s certainly something that Supercar needs to have a look at.
“The idea is for us to be able to turn up, pack everything down on the Friday, race Saturday-Sunday. The race meeting’s been great; we’ve had some fantastic races, plenty of action, controversy – everything that we need.
“So we can do it in a two-day period, but turning up here on a Wednesday or Thursday, because you can’t put the trailer back down – there’s got to be a better way.
“If we’re all here, we might as well be running. You know, we should have had a run like Friday or product night or something. So yeah, it is the longest race meeting I’ve been where we haven’t done anything.”
Ironically, the teams stayed on at Sydney Motorsport Park on the Monday for a ride-day, with the hundreds of guests being taken around the circuit.
Supercars teams took the opportunity to run their co-drivers for valuable mileage ahead of the Sandown and Bathurst endurance races later this year.
