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The championship will return to Aotearoa in April after it this year missed out on an event for the first time since 2000 (pandemic years aside), following the closure of Pukekohe.
Quinn owns the Taupo International Motorsport Park which will play host to said return, as well as fellow North Island venue Hampton Downs Motorsport Park.
He revealed his plans on the KTM Summer Grill, including a desire for one of those two events to be an enduro.
“My plan is to put on a really good show at Taupo for everybody,” said Quinn, also the largest shareholder in Triple Eight Race Engineering.
“I know that they’ve sold the corporates out, which is always a good sign, [and] we’ve got 700 campsites established.
“But, my mission is, on the Sunday evening of the event, I hope to be able to go to the executives at Supercars and go, ‘Right, we now need to start planning for a double-header’; an endurance race at Hampton Downs, a sprint round at Taupo, or vice versa.
“Whatever it is, we need to start planning because the Kiwis are a great source of fans and a lot of the sponsors that are in the V8 series have quite a presence in New Zealand, and if we start working on it after a good event…
“That’s what I’d be doing, because you can absorb a lot of the cost quite well so it’s not going to cost you another round; it’s going to be quite efficient.”
Taupo essentially replaced The Bend on the 2024 Supercars calendar, which remains the minimum 12 events.
Supercars is contractually obliged to pay teams $650,000 per charter for each event above the bare 12, although negotiating that figure downwards is not beyond the realms of possibility if the double-header concept creates a mutually beneficial outcome.
Also playing to the idea is the fact that the Kiwi stop on the calendar is now supported by the national government, whereas the Pukekohe event of old was backed by Auckland’s.
Quinn wants to further leverage the trip across the Tasman by taking some drivers down to the circuit which he owns on the South Island, Highlands Motorsport Park, for a tourism activation.
“New Zealand needs to use the V8s to promote tourism,” he added.
“So, what we should do when we’re in Taupo in April, four or five drivers need to come down to Highlands and we need to make a Sky/Foxtel half-hour show, lifestyle show, whatever, about the Highlands.
“Do a little bit of Highlands driving but also expose the area, and we can have a piss-up contest.
“All the drivers can drink as much red wine as they can and then see how many steps they can take.”
The 2024 ITM Taupo Super400 takes place on April 19-21.
For more from Tony Quinn, check out the full episode of the KTM Summer Grill.
