24 Supercars enough?

[Terry S]

the Formula 1 CEO Domencali said recently:

"If you have a good show 20 cars are enough"

Surely this should be applied to Supercars.

My suggestion on who should be dropped immediately would be Jack Smith and Macauley Jones.

[Sandgroper]

I loved watching 50 cars at Bathurst back in the day.

More the merrier for me

[Jack65]

Supercars seeking to reduce the field to 24 cars, buying out two existing race charters and selling the 26th to BRT. All as part of its misguided belief that the rest of the world cares about Supercars.

Supercars hunting to buy out a team

[Mixer]

We could lose half of BJR and Tickford and nobody is worse off.

[Average Punter]

Worries me any time a CEO of what purports to be a racing formula utters words like "if you have a good show..."
Because that usually means they have a motive to make it a "show".

And it ceases to be racing

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by Sandgroper

I loved watching 50 cars at Bathurst back in the day.

The last time we had a field anywhere near that big we had so many crashes from slower cars getting in the way of the cars that could win.

Just rose coloured glasses.

[Sandgroper]

Originally Posted by Mixer

The last time we had a field anywhere near that big we had so many crashes from slower cars getting in the way of the cars that could win.

Just rose coloured glasses.

I just dream of the old times

[chunterer]

Rather have more entries not less!

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by Jack65

Supercars seeking to reduce the field to 24 cars, buying out two existing race charters and selling the 26th to BRT. All as part of its misguided belief that the rest of the world cares about Supercars.

Supercars hunting to buy out a team

The reason for the alleged buy shows the current V8Supercar owners don’t really have a clue what is important in their package.

So it’s cheaper to freight less cars?
So why not a championship of 20 cars, 16… 2

This is an ENTERTAINMENT category.
Operating within the confines of sporting codes and technical rules of engagement.

Taking that ENTERTAINMENT to less players to save money is nuts
Especially when others want to come in and don’t seem to be able to.

In the good old days, the transporters full of gear used to be put on a boat to go to NZ. If you used the mid season ‘break’ correctly, there could be transit over slotted in there nicely to get that to happen again.

If the V8Supercar management wants to go to Singapore… surely it has to be an economic call. GET ANOTHER PLANE!!!
If you can get one you can get five if you want to.

And let’s not even think about what would happen in a flyaway round. A fire like Mr Waters or some of the crashes from Darwin & other weekends, and the small spares cache makes for game over.

Is that what the customer wants?

By customer, I mean you and I
The tifosi. The casual viewer.

Are we in ANY conversation about anything in this sport?

(Where is Mr Adderton….?)

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by Sandgroper

I just dream of the old times

I love the early to mid 90s cars that had to be muscled and driven hard rather than on rails like now but you can't turn back time.

[Trev Campbell]

Originally Posted by Mixer

The last time we had a field anywhere near that big we had so many crashes from slower cars getting in the way of the cars that could win.

Just rose coloured glasses.

But for supposedly the best drivers in the nation, They sure whinged a lot about it. Happens at Le Mans too, Prototypes passing GT's with AM Drivers in them, its all part of the race. I think it's part of the skill/luck of driving a racecar

[GTRMagic]

[bathurst77]

For those yearning for 50 car grids cars that were heavily modified road cars privateers building a car, lots of makes models and classes I have 2 suggestions

Bathurst 6 hour
Bathurst 12 hour

Supercars is a form of entertainment firstly, with a format, a formula, target demographic designed to get eyeballs, sposorship and make a profit for all

"motorSPORT" is merely the pretense,
You may as well complain that Spice girls never wrote a symphony

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by Trev Campbell

But for supposedly the best drivers in the nation, They sure whinged a lot about it. Happens at Le Mans too, Prototypes passing GT's with AM Drivers in them, its all part of the race. I think it's part of the skill/luck of driving a racecar

The Le Mans comparison is irrelevant really, the last time they did this they had proddies on track with Supercars, which was stupid.

[Tourer]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

In the good old days, the transporters full of gear used to be put on a boat to go to NZ. If you used the mid season ‘break’ correctly, there could be transit over slotted in there nicely to get that to happen again.

If the V8Supercar management wants to go to Singapore… surely it has to be an economic call. GET ANOTHER PLANE!!!
If you can get one you can get five if you want to.

Now that teams know how to pack for a flyaway, there's little benefit in going back to taking transporters to NZ. It was problematical with shipping schedules (much more variable than aircraft scheduling) and that a-l-m-o-s-t caused a postponed race in Oz at least once. Plus the Australian rigs are over-width and over-length in NZ, so it's a big exercise to take them, under police escort to whichever circuit is going to be used. Honestly don't think that anyone who actually did it back in the day would want to go back to that.

Of course, taking the transporters could allow more cars than 24 but aircraft do that too. When flyaways first started, 32 cars were taken and the cars, plus all team gear, TV gear all fitted into 2 x 747 freighters. The whole exercise was planned around 2 aircraft and it all fitted.

Seems strange to now want to cut back to 24 for air freight - wouldn't get you down to one aircraft so I can only assume that there's a desire to take a LOT more TV gear and the like, meaning only 1.5 aircraft for cars and team equipment?

[V8 Fireworks]

Originally Posted by Mixer

The Le Mans comparison is irrelevant really, the last time they did this they had proddies on track with Supercars, which was stupid.

The Nürburgring 24 hour still has proddies on track with GT3s (and a number of classes of varying speed in-between) mostly without issue.

Though the fan favourite Dacia Logan was punted off by a careless GT3 car.

[GTRMagic]

So… if the story from V8Sleuth is accurate.. it might just be Tickford selling on 2 of their licences back to V8Supercar…

Presumably they would look to downsize their shop as well.. far too much overhead in the new plug & play world…

Wonder which pilots might not come back?

[Mixer]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Wonder which pilots might not come back?

I think you'd have to argue for Waters & Randle as the strongest commercial package.

[gravin]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

So… if the story from V8Sleuth is accurate.. it might just be Tickford selling on 2 of their licences back to V8Supercar…

I think it might just be one as I have seen mention for a return to the three car model of past. No sure where I read it.

Maybe BJR could also be dropping one, to go to a two + Smith.

[Mixer]

I think The Tickford thing is easily explained by a larger team supporting a larger engineering business under previous generations.

Now with Gen3 eliminating a lot of that team Engineering, they need to seek other work for their engineering business and the other cars no longer servce that purpose.

They've never really had great drivers in them or been fully funded, with Tickford being notorious for underbidding even BJR to pinch sponsors.