Supercars releases Winton schedule, confirms AD session

The schedule for the Truck Assist Winton SuperSprint has been released, confirming the two days of Supercars Championship action including an Additional Drivers Practice session.

As announced with the calendar release, the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship field will appear on-track on just the Saturday and Sunday of the three-day event, with support categories all qualifying on the Friday.

The full release of the weekend schedule shows that there will be one standard practice session, Armor All Qualifying, and a race, for the Supercars Championship on each of the latter two days.

While knockout qualifying is in play, the schedule means that the only session prior to that which sets the starting order for Qualifying for Race 13 will be the Additional Drivers Practice session.

At other SuperSprint events, there has been a practice session for full-time drivers before Practice 2 would determine which drivers got direct passage to Part 2 of qualifying for the Saturday race.

The schedule arguably makes Additional Drivers Practice, which had initially been scrapped in 2019 before a return at Symmons Plains last month, an important determinant of the outcome of qualifying.

Practice 1 at Winton is, however, slightly longer than usual at 40 minutes, while Sunday’s Practice 2 is a standard 30 minutes.

The races themselves are the SuperSprint-standard 120km on Saturday and 200km on Saturday, meaning 40 and 67 laps respectively around Winton’s 3.00km circuit.

Support categories will be Paynter Dixon Touring Car Masters, Kumho Tyre Super3 Series, ECB SuperUtes Series, Australian Formula Ford, and a debut with Supercars for the Excel Series.

The event takes place on May 24-26, the same weekend as the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500 race.

Schedule: Truck Assist Winton SuperSprint, Winton Motor Raceway