MOTORSPORT: Supercars spending cap called for

Former Supercars supremo Tony Cochrane has proposed a radical AFL-style “soft cap” on spending to reinvigorate Supercars racing.

Cochrane, who built Supercars into a commercial force during his reign from 1996 to 2012, has been chairman of the Gold Coast Suns AFL team since 2016 and is unambiguous about where the origins of his plan originates.

“Everybody in the AFL gets a chance,” Cochrane told Auto Action magazine.

“If the cycle works perfectly, every seven to nine years, every AFL club will get into the go-zone to make it to the big dance in September [the AFL grand final], making a much more level playing field.”

Speaking to AA, Cochrane called for a $1 million per-car budget per-season cap, not including driver salary. A budget to run a Supercar is around double that at the moment.

He said that cap would be policed rigorously, in the same way technical parity between race cars is scrutinised now.

“You stop the arms race,” he argued. “I’m Tony Cochrane, I’ve just thought ‘I’m in a team and I’m going to spend $20 million a year’.

“You can’t, right? So you stop the arms race and you give people a much more definitive way of going racing and knowing what their budget’s going to be for the year.”

Supercars racing is dominated by two big-spending teams, DJR Team Penske and Triple Eight Race Engineering, which between them have won all bar one of the 30 races held so far in 2019.

Cochrane admits he doesn’t know if his radical plan would work. Policing team spending would be an obvious challenge.

“If I was still running the sport, I would spend whatever it would cost – I don’t know, pick a number, 150 grand – and I would spend the next four months getting somebody who’s got a good grasp of it to go off and prosecute it,” Cochrane told autoaction.com.au.