The famous Adelaide parklands layout is undergoing its biggest ever shake-up in order to accomodate the Australian round of the MotoGP World Championship from 2027.
Adelaide will from next year host MotoGP and the Supercars Championship just weeks apart, enabling two uses from its temporary infrastructure.
The main focus is on adapting the venue to MotoGP’s safety standards, which includes an expansion to feature roads that were last part of the circuit when Adelaide hosted the Australian F1 Grand Prix.
While the same base layout will be utilised for both MotoGP and Supercars, tweaks will be made between events to ensure the spectacle of the latter’s Grand Final remains.
South Australian Motor Sport Board (SAMSB) chief executive Mark Warren and head of motorsport Liam Curkpatrick have been surveying Supercars drivers and team bosses on the subject in Darwin.
“It’s important for us to make sure that, whilst we get it right for a MotoGP event, we also get it right for a Supercars event,” Warren told Speedcafe.
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“We’re looking at doing the design in parallel and, so far, the feedback has been fantastic.
“There was some concerns about, is it going to be too fast and flowy (due to being redesigned for MotoGP)?
“But we’ve gone to a lot of effort to look at the kerbs and how we might bring the barrier lines in to really make sure we retain that street circuit feel for Supercars.
“The drivers have been enthusiastic about that because their main concern was, suddenly you’ve got what might look like a Philip Island, which might not suit a Supercars event.”
Warren said feedback in Darwin has included excitement about the return of the historic F1 track segment that includes Stag Corner and Brewery Bend.
Brewery Bend, which connects Rundle Road and Dequetteville Terrace, may be profiled to mimic the Supercars circuit’s Turn 8 sweeper, which is bypassed on the expanded layout.
“Some of the speed profiling we’ve done already shows that the speeds are very similar to what the current Turn 8 is,” he said.
“Obviously, we need to make sure that it’s going to be safe for the next 10, 20 years to come, but don’t take away too much of the consequences if drivers to get it wrong.”
Warren said the feedback from drivers and teams was being sought ahead of a driver-in-the-loop simulation being developed.
“I think that’s pretty important because then we know for sure whether it’s going to work for the Supercars racing,” he said.
“We can do all the engineering simulations in the world, but I think that will tell us if it actually does produce good racing.”
That will be followed by a homologation process with both the FIA and FIM – the governing bodies for world motorsport and motorcycle racing respectively.
Warren noted the current plan for the MotoGP circuit remains “remarkably similar” to the initial illustration presented during the announcement of the deal in February.
“There’s a lot of refinements, particularly around corners and alignments, but the general shape of it looks very similar,” he said.
“Even before we made the announcement, there was about 18 different versions we’d already gone through by the time we got to that.
“We weren’t going to announce it before we knew that we could actually build a safe and also great MotoGP circuit.”
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