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Whatever happens next, I think the health of the series is heavily reliant on naturally occurring entertainment (that means no gimmicks like contrived fuel / pitstop regs, entertainment yellows, reverse grids, etc). People enjoy watching and are captivated by bold moves, overtakes and action, which overall, is something I feel like the current formula is lacking.
In regards to the mention of "what people want to see", in my experiences with non-motoring people that I've watched races with, they love seeing overtakes, or at least, overtaking attempts. They don't notice the speed or style of cars, they care about action. The problem with Supercars at the moment is that they're all extremely close in terms of lap time, which sounds great on paper but doesn't really make for reliably exciting on track action. A great example was the race at QR last year (or the year before), with Caruso in the Nissan following behind another car for many laps, finally making an unsuccessful passing attempt with that failed passing attempt being enough to kill the tyres and ruin Caruso's pace. Does anyone else remember that one? That's a big problem, IMO.
I'm also somewhat uncertain of what I think of the development freedom that teams have, with enormous investment spent chasing the tiniest of gains. I'm someone that appreciates technical development, but I do often wonder if this is the right way for it to be done in this series.
How would I change things for the future? Well, I'd look to the Japanese Super GT series for influence, as I think they've struck a great balance between entertainment, development and competition. I'd move to a multi-class formula, with two purposes there.
The first benefit to multi-class racing being to create more natural race traffic, which in turn results in a more exciting and entertaining dynamic to the race, as overtaking becomes a far more important skill than it currently is (currently most races are won by hotlapping, not overtaking), as the race leaders have to be able to negotiate traffic and make the right moves at the right time.
The second is that we can then help different teams find a competitive home that is best suited to their budget. You would have somewhere between 10 to 20 cars running in an outright class with bigger development freedoms and more of an engineering focus and a second class with tighter regulations, lower costs (perhaps even full parity regs?) with maybe 15-30 cars in this class.
Performance wise, I'd love to see an outright class with more power, grip and lower laptimes overall. Can this be achieved on a reasonable budget if we were using more flexible technical regs? It would be very interesting to see what a 888 / DJRTP / FPR style team could put together. Other teams without as much of an engineering team - or even a few Super2 teams - would then slot into the second class, with these cars perhaps sitting around the same pace as the current cars, perhaps detuned for reliability.
I'd match all this with a move back to single race weekends, as longer races have proven to be more dynamic and interesting IMO. Single race formats also make for a more compelling championship fight, as each win / loss has a far more significant bearing on the title. (Single races may also reduce running costs for certain teams, as you can only crash out of one race in a weekend....).
Do I think anything like this will ever happen? Not really. But I know there will be some very interesting times ahead...
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