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Supercars handing an endurance race to The Bend for 2025 is the best hint yet that the 60th running of the Sandown 500 next year will be the last.
As expected, The Bend – now known as Shell V-Power Motorsport Park – missed out on a spot on the 2024 Supercars calendar, which will once again be contested across just 12 points-paying rounds.
However there was a twist in today’s 2024 calendar announcement, which also included confirmation that The Bend will host a two-driver enduro as part of the 2025 Supercars season.
This is the second time The Bend, led by Sam Shahin, has landed an enduro deal, with the circuit having wrangled the 500-kilometre Bathurst warm-up off Sandown for the 2020 season.
The race never went ahead, though, as COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the Supercars schedule for the best part of three years.
As it stands, details on this latest deal to bring a long-distance Supercars race to The Bend are thin on the ground.
However Speedcafe understands that the agreement with The Bend is that the race must take place outside of the winter months.
Unless there is significant reform to the post-Bathurst part of the calendar, that means the enduro at The Bend will almost certainly fall into the mid-September slot currently occupied by Sandown.
Sources have indicated that, as it stands, no firm, final decision on the make-up of the 2025 enduro season has been made – which means a three-race enduro season with The Bend, Sandown and Bathurst is not impossible.
However it is also clear that Plan A is for the 60th running of the Sandown 500 next year to be the last before The Bend takes over as the sole enduro outside of the Bathurst 1000.
Factors that play into that scenario include a consistent unwillingness from Supercars to re-expand the enduro season beyond two races since the pandemic.
There are also question marks over the mid-term future of the Sandown facility as property developers move in on the lucrative parcel of land, 25 kilometres from the Melbourne CBD.
Another knock-on effect from The Bend deal could be Supercars’ aspirations to race at the Singapore Grand Prix, which now becomes complicated should the Singapore event retain its September date for 2025.
