MOTORSPORT: 2024 Supercars calendar unveiled

Supercars has released a largely unchanged calendar for its 2024 season, with the biggest news being the omission of South Australia’s Shell V-Power Motorsport Park at The Bend.

The newest permanent national-level circuit in the country, The Bend has been a fixture on the Supercars calendar since 2018, while in 2020 the venue hosted meets on consecutive weekends on different circuit configurations, as the championship scrambled to piece together a season.

The move to bench the provincial South Australian round appears to be due to Supercars’ TV contract, which stipulates 12 rounds, with additional events having to be funded outside of the TV deal.

Up until now, the events hosted at The Bend have been backed by the circuit, one of the rare non-Supercars promoted slots on the schedule.

The silver lining for The Bend is that the venue has been guaranteed an endurance race on the 2025 calendar, a move which was previously slated to take place in 2020, prior to the pandemic reshuffling of that year’s calendar.

The change has paved the way for a return to New Zealand on April 19-21 at the Tony Quinn-owned Taupo Motorsport Park, located in the heart of the North Island.

That event will see the championship cross the Tasman for the first time since 2022, when Pukekohe Park Raceway was closed for motorsport.

In other movements on the schedule, the Newcastle season-opener will switch to Bathurst and the Australian Grand Prix event will have a tweaked format, with Supercars moving out of its pitlane garages to make way for Formula 2. And Symmons Plains in Tasmania will shift from May to August.

In terms of formats, timed races are set to make an appearance at Perth, Darwin and Tasmania, while the bulk of events will feature two races.

The combined Dunlop Series for older Super2 and Super3 machinery will take in rounds at Bathurst, Perth, Townsville, Sandown, Bathurst and Adelaide.

The 2023 Repco Supercars Championship concludes next weekend with the VAILO Adelaide 500, where Brodie Kostecki will defend a 131-point advantage over fellow Chevrolet Camaro driver Shane van Gisbergen.

Elsewhere, the Shannons SpeedSeries will return with an expanded 10-round calendar taking in Sandown, Symmons Plains, Phillip Island, The Bend, Queensland Raceway twice, Sydney Motorsport Park twice, and Bathurst.

The draft schedule released features an unfilled slot from August 30 to September 1, which paddock speculation has pegged as a debut round in the Northern Territory.

The Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series, meanwhile, is set for a seven-round schedule, kicking off at Sandown in February through to a repeat of the doubleheader in Sydney and Bathurst, where the local series is set to be once again joined by the Kumho TCR World Tour on their Downunder swing.

The TCR Australia series wrapped up yesterday at Mount Panorama, with Josh Buchan claiming the overall championship honours for Hyundai, while the World Tour will go down to the wire next weekend in Macau, with Lynk and Co’s Yann Ehrlacher tied with Audi’s Rob Huff for the series lead and Hyundai’s Norbert Michelisz a single point adrift in third.

2024 Supercars Calendar:

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