A fully revised 2020 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship has been revealed, with racing set to commence on June 27 at Sydney Motorsport Park before concluding with a second trip to Bathurst in February of 2021.
The second Mount Panorama event is slated to be contested on February 5-7, coinciding with planned timing of the 2021 Liqui-Moly Bathurst 12 Hour.
Unfortunately, the new calendar has seen the removal of rounds from Gold Coast and Newcastle.
The original Bathurst 1000 date has been retained as rounds in Winton, Darwin and Townsville have all been pushed back to new July and August dates.
A round in Auckland has been rescheduled to January 9-10 with no confirmation as to whether the event will be held at Pukekohe Park or Hampton Downs.
The New Zealand round will act as the penultimate weekend in the championship before the field heads to Mount Panorama for the season finale.
All rounds will feature two-day events except the Bathurst 1000 and season finale which remains four- and three-day weekends.
Supercars CEO Sean Seamer was pleased to deliver the news to fans but emphasised that all dates are subject to change.
“This is a fixed stake in the ground that we can now move forward on, and we all need to be flexible on how much racing we can and can’t do over the coming eight months,” he said.
Seamer added that the series did consider re-visiting circuits such as Queensland Raceway and Phillip Island as well as running doubleheaders at certain venues.
“We looked at everything. We looked at bubble concepts, we looked at back-to-back rounds,” he explained.
“But the calendar has been formulated in such a way that we’ve been able to maintain the spacing between the rounds, for both medical and cost reasons.
“We believe it allows us to maintain our national footprint, which is really important to us.”
As for the Bathurst season-finale, it is unsure what portion of GT racing will take place, if any at all.
However, Seamer did affirm that the second trip to Bathurst will feature a different race format as usually seen during the Bathurst 1000 enduro weekend.
“We certainly wouldn’t want to try and replicate the Bathurst 1000,” he said.
“There’s a tremendous opportunity going to Bathurst a second time, but tremendous risk as well. So we’re going to have to be innovative and make sure it’s different.”
Revised 2020 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship
- June 27-28: Sydney Motorsport Park
- July 18-19: Truck Assist Winton
- August 8-9: BetEasy Darwin Triple Crown
- August 29-30: Townsville
- September 19-20: OTR The Bend
- October 8-11: Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000
- October 31-November 1: PIRTEK Perth
- November 21-22: Tyrepower Tasmania
- December 12-13: Penrite Oil Sandown
- January 9-10: ITM Auckland
- February 5-7: Bathurst