MOTORSPORT: Virtual Supercars a ratings win

Supercars is claiming hundreds of thousands of global viewers took in the simulated version of the V8 championship that debuted on Wednesday night.

Created to cater for racing fans after the coronavirus forced the postponement of Supercars real-world racing until at least June, the BP All Stars Eseries pits all 25 championship drivers against each other in virtual V8 Holden Commodores and Ford Mustangs.

Other professional categories including F1 have also created simulator-based racing series to fill in the gap.

Highlight numbers for the Supercars debut included 158,000 viewers of at least some of the two-hour telecast on Fox Sports 506. Another 210,736 viewers tuned in by online platforms, Supercars has reported.

Wednesday night’s round included two races at Phillip Island and one at Monza in Italy. Ten rounds are scheduled out to early June.

As well as Fox Sport 506, the Eseries is telecast on the Kayo streaming service, Network 10's 10Play and a variety of online outlets including Supercars teams’ Facebook pages.

Network 10 and Kayo have yet to report their figures. The Fox Sport 506 result, which averaged 70,000 viewers, was the fifth most watched show on subscription TV on Wednesday and the only Fox Sports show in the top 20.

“Round one is as a great first start and rewards the effort everyone has made to get this Eseries up and running,” said Supercars CEO Sean Seamer.

“We’re unique in our ability to provide much needed entertainment to everyone in Australia while we await a return to real world racing.

“Having all of our drivers join our commentary team made for a brilliant experience and it was great to see both new and existing fans tuned in to watch the action.

“The feedback from fans has been overwhelmingly positive and we look forward to next week’s second round, where we will race on two of the world’s most iconic circuits; Silverstone and Barcelona.

“We hope everyone continues to enjoy watching our drivers provide the best real time entertainment on TV right now.”

After Wednesday’s three-race hit-out Ford Mustang driver Scott Mclaughlin leads overall with 285 points, 43 points ahead of Cam waters and 45 pints clear of Chaz Mostert.

McLaughlin, a sim-racing expert who won the second round of the IndyCar series last weekend, dominated the opener at the island and then picked his way through from 11th to lead Waters home in the sole Monza hit-out.

The defending Supercars champion avoided a huge shunt on the opening lap of the race and nearly ran out of fuel. He was saved because the race was declared one lap early because of the intervention of the safety car.

“It was pretty tight on fuel there, but thankfully we were able to save enough and get to the end there,” he said. “That was some good racing I think, I hope everyone enjoyed watching it.”

Tickford Racing’s Jack le Brocq won the reverse grid race at Phillip Island in his Supercheap Mustang.

He was actually shunted off the road at the last corner by Erebus Motorsport’s Anton De Pasquale. But the Holden driver was demoted by a 30 second post-race penalty.

“There was some pretty hairy racing going on, I’m glad it was in the virtual world and glad to get through it,” Le Brocq said

1 Scott McLaughlin 285
2 Cameron Waters 242
3 Chaz Mostert 240
4 Andre Heimgartner 218
5 Fabian Coulthard 210
6 Jack Le Brocq 203
7 Will Davison 185
8 Bryce Fullwood 178
9 Zane Goddard153
10 Nick Percat 153
11 Mark Winterbottom 140
12 Jake Kostecki 140
13 Garry Jacobson 135
14 Shane van Gisbergen 132
15 Scott Pye 130
16 Anton De Pasquale 114
17 Lee Holdsworth 104
18 Todd Hazelwood 102
19 Jamie Whincup 100
20 David Reynolds 99
21 Macauley Jones 95
22 Rick Kelly 92
23 Chris Pither 92
24 Jack Smith 81
25 Alex Davison 80