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Experts analyse potential race formats

03 Jun 2020
Three races mooted for Sydney Motorsport Park
3 mins by James Pavey
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Supercars commentators Neil Crompton and Mark Skaife have had their say on how the return to racing could look at Sydney Motorsport Park later this month.

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The Virgin Australia Supercars Championship will resume from the COVID-19 hiatus at Eastern Creek on June 27-28, with all event formats bar the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 to be confirmed.

With teams at least initially required to travel with minimal staff, it has been suggested that could play against the opportunity to have mid-race refuelling.

Speaking on Supercars SideTracked, Crompton indicated a three-race format with pitstops only for tyre changes or repairs was a likely outcome.

“It’s looking as though we will end up with three sprint races… using most of the tank full, if not the entire tank of fuel, but without a fuel stop,” he explained.

“It’s likely we will see one stop for tyres throughout the race.”

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Crompton pointed out various formats have been used over the category’s history and supported the initiative to get real-life action back underway.

“We’ve been around the map a thousand times on this – it’s the 60th year of the Australian Touring Car Championship and Supercars and we’ve tried everything known to man,” he said.

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“We did arrive at two 200km races at the beginning of the year. Unfortunately because of circumstances that’s not been able to unfold but we’ve got huge commercial pressures to deal with here as well.

“So at the moment let’s get racing, try to put the best foot forward we can and if that’s the solution the majority of people are looking for, that’s what we have got to go with.”

Five-time Supercars champion Skaife added unpredictability will be key to putting on a good show.

“You want less predictability, you want to be able to mix the qualifying order up, so you get a better outcome in terms of racing quality,” said Skaife.

“It needs to have the jeopardy, it needs to have the narrative of the weekend.

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“What our fans want is the best quality touring car racing.

“I’m not wedded to what the actual format is.

“I think in the end you do need to have pit stops, you do need to have varying grids and you do need to have unpredictability, based on what tyre you’ve got on the car at whatever time.”

As for the potential to reintroduce reverse grids, Skaife declared it is not the appropriate time: “We did see some unbelievably good [reverse grid] races but we saw a big cost bill.

“Right at the moment, with the recalibration in the sport, there’s no way as a business that we should incur more costs to achieve this.”

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