But as the category ushers in the new it’ll also reintroduce an element of the old, with fuel churns set to return for the first time in over 20 years.
Teams will park their fuel towers for the entire Sprint Cup portion of the championship, with refuelling in the 200km races to be done via hand-held churns.
Supercars motorsport manager Tim Edwards says the move is designed to save costs for teams that are wearing the expense of 1200 extra racing kilometres.
“For the first 25 races, all of the 200 kay races throughout those, to set the fuel towers up is quite labour intensive,” Edwards explained.
“When you’re doing a 200 kay race you only actually need anywhere between 15 and 35 litres of fuel, sometimes a little bit more than that.
“So setting a fuel tower up, which takes three people to man during the race, a huge amount of assembly and disassembly, it’s hugely labour intensive, just for a small amount of fuel.
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“[Using fuel churns] seems like a logical step and it changes the dynamic.
“You get to the end of Queensland Raceway, which is the end of the Sprint Cup, and then we revert to the fuel towers for the enduros.
“And the last three rounds being Gold Coast, Sandown and Adelaide, they’re 250 kay races and you’d need too many churns to do those races.
“If you try and do it here [at the Bathurst 1000] it’s 21 churns. It’s probably not ideal.”
Sprint Cup rounds at Taupo, Tasmania, Perth, Darwin and Ipswich will feature two 120km races on the Saturday followed by 200km on Sunday.
Sydney Motorsport Park and Townsville will have 100km on Friday followed by 200km encounters on both Saturday and Sunday.
Albert Park – where the category no longer has a pitlane to work from – is the only real outlier, with 105km races on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and just 85km on Sunday.
“Even though we’re calling it a Sprint Cup, there’s nothing ‘sprint’ about it,” said Edwards.
“It’s not like we’ve got short little races. Each of those races on Saturday are 120 kilometres and then the 200 kay race on Sunday.”
“Even though it’s a sprint series, they are still substantial races.”
The other key element of the sprint format is the fact the two Saturday races (and their corresponding qualifying sessions) are to be run on different tyre compounds.
“It’s not going to be easy for the drivers, it’s not going to be easy for the teams,” said Edwards. “But we believe that it just adds another dynamic to it.
“In a three-race weekend, not only have you got two races on Saturday that are on a different tyre, you’ve got a race on Sunday that’s of a longer format as well.
“So it’s not a cut and paste, learn what happens on Saturday and look at 24 examples of what worked, and then choose what worked best for the Sunday.
“All three races have a different dynamic to them.”
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