MOTORSPORT: New Melbourne circuit 'in two years'

A new $200m motorsport complex has been approved by a council in Melbourne’s outer south-east, with claims it could open as early as 2022.

The 129-hectare site, about 55km from Melbourne’s central business district at Pakenham, is envisaged as a venue for Supercar racing.

The Cardinia Motor Recreation and Education Park is to have a 3.6km circuit created by Apex Circuit Design, the British company with the brief for the 4.5km second circuit at Bathurst.

The proposed Victorian complex is also to have a drag strip, a 1.4km rallycross circuit, a karting track, a driver education and experience centre, and (like Bathurst’s Mt Panorama and The Bend, South Australia’s still relatively new circuit) a trackside hotel.

There are concerns in the area though that it won’t cater enough for motorcycle activity and, unsurprisingly, some residents have reservations about the project, especially noise.

However, developer Podium 1’s chief operations officer Felicity Richardson has declared: “it’s set to be the motorsports hub of Victoria – and we can even argue Australia, as there are no other sites like it”.

“We are now going to start working on the detailed design, which will probably take a couple more months, and then we will progress to construction,” Richardson said.

Podium 1 has stated that the project is not reliant on receiving government funding.

Cardinia shire councillor Brett Owen said motorsport was “a legitimate recreation in our shire that has been forgotten about for a long time”.

“It’s been 15 years in relation to this site to get to where we are now,” Cr Owen said.

“Council purchased [the site at] 335 McGregor Road back in 2004 and now the planning process is before us.”

Pakenham, a burgeoning satellite suburb, and the surrounding area south-east of Melbourne are forecast to have a population of one million within 20 years.

Construction of the second Bathurst circuit, west of McPhillamy Park in the famous public-road Mt Panorama circuit, is anticipated to begin in 2021 and take two years.

Meanwhile, the wheels are in motion for a permanent motorsport facility near Townsville, which already has an annual Supercar round at the temporary Reid Park circuit.

The proposed $18.3m DriveIT NQ facility, with a heavy emphasis on driver training, would be 50km away on 306 hectares at Calcium.

The federal government has committed $12m to the project and the Queensland government $5m to upgrade surrounding roads.

The Supercar organisation has hitched its wagon more closely to Fox Sports with a deal for its Bathurst 12-Hour GT race to be broadcast, ad-free, on the pay-TV telecaster for the first time next February 2 (2020).

Fox will be the lead broadcaster, with a simulcast on the event’s traditional telecaster, the free-to-air Seven Network’s 7mate.

International viewers will continue to have access to the 12-Hour live and free via streaming on the event’s website.

Fox will screen qualifying, the top 10 shootout and the support races exclusively.

The significance is not what it means for exposure of the 12-Hour but a sign of Supercar wanting to co-operate with Fox as it comes time to negotiate a new television contract for the Supercar Championship beyond next year.

Sports other than the major football codes, AFL and NRL, and cricket are seen as having little leverage for more lucrative TV deals in future, with neither free-to-air networks nor Fox having the money any longer to splash on bigger sports rights deals.

Without any mention of financial figures, the Seven Network (now headed by former Supercar chief executive James Warburton) recently announced live coverage next year of the second season of the TCR Australia Series (including a new Bathurst event in November), the new S5000 open-wheeler series and the Bathurst Six-Hour production car race at Easter.

Warburton is a director Australian Racing Group, organiser of the carsales.com.au-sponsored TCR series and the broader Shannons motorsport program.

Formula 1 teams have rejected tyres Pirelli has developed for next year, voting unanimously to stick with this year’s compounds.

The rubber the Italian manufacturer had developed for 2020 was tested by teams in practice at the US Grand Prix in early November and more extensively this month after the season finale in Abu Dhabi.

Pirelli is already working on rubber to produce better close-quarters racing when F1 switches from 13-inch to 20-inch wheel rims in 2021 and had come up with compounds for next year that it saw as a step in that direction. However, the teams were not happy with them.

Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel called the new compounds “a disappointment” and McLaren’s Carlos Sainz Junior said they were “very weird and very bad”.

Pirelli has accepted the verdict but warned that F1 won’t have the greater unpredictability that owner Liberty Media was wanting next season.