THE PRIVATEERS CUP REALLY WAS A HIDDEN GEM

I was recently listening to the ‘V8 Slueth Podcast with John Faulkner’ and it got me thinking. The privateer’s cup really was a hidden gem of its time wasn’t it? John brought up the fact that the REC Supercars system really has gotten a bit out of hand these days and I have to agree. You need to be a millionaire to be up front with the big teams, but back in the day you didn’t need to be.

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Supercars in it’s golden era was really entertaining growing up. You had fields of 40/50 cars showing up to a Supercars event and it was exciting to watch because not only did you have the big and small teams racing in the heat races against each other, but you even had the average punter have a crack in the main game for a potential race win.

These days it’s impossible to do that in Supercars if you are not in the big three marquee teams, which consist of RedBull Triple 8 Racing, Shell V Power DJR or Tickford Racing. Nowadays, all the little privateer teams like Image Racing, Matt Chahda Racing and Jon McCorkindale Racing will struggle to get a race win even in the Super2 Series. However, it is not impossible for the little team to get a win in Super2. Just look at Jordan Boys carrying Image Racing to the front of that field, but just imagine if you had ‘wildcards’ racing in older model chassis in the main game from time to time on a monthly basis. I think it would be exciting to watch as a spectator because everyone loves to watch an underdog.

Let’s expand the field of Supercars away from its current REC system. You could still have the Super2 and Super3 Series apart of the Supercars schedule. Here’s what I believe should happen. Give the privateers an option to race at a main game level, even if it was just at the Bathurst 1000, like the old days and increase the size of the Supercar fields. Now I know it would cost a fortune to become a wildcard in the Supercars at the moment, but those budget caps really need to change because the sport has just become way to expensive to make any sort of profit from. Whoever buys Supercars next in the future needs to consider expanding the field of entries, which will entice a broader fan base back to your regular programming.

These days I seriously struggle to watch a full weekend of Supercars action. I tune into the Super2/3 Series regularly though because I like watching the young guns and unfunded teams have a crack and show what the future of the Supercar Series could look like, but to me it’s become a procession and quite a bland product as a whole. I’ll still watch Supercars from time to time, but it needs a bit of variety for your average punter to tune in more often and at the moment I find the series pretty stale at the best of times.

I hope going forward Supercars management brings back a privateers style vibe back into it’s racing because I personally would find it more exciting to watch as a spectator. Somehow if the budgets get reduced properly with the next generation of cars and they eventually twinkle down to the lower Supercars categories there is a chance that this privateers style racing could come back in some sort of way onto the Supercars grid away from the Super 2 and Super 3 fields.

I wish Supercars would even let Super2/3 follow a TCR kind of format where they would go to more regional tracks on their own seperate events away from the main game. For example, letting them race at Wakefield Park, Queensland Raceway and Morgan Park. That’s the reason I’ve recently leaned to watching TCR these days. ARG (Australian Racing Group) have made it more relatable for the regular fan base to watch its series because they don’t just focus on main cities to race in, they also focus on regional areas to race at like the circuits I mentioned above. That is where I think, at the very least, Supercars could gain it’s older fan base back with the Super2 and Super3 Series.

Going forward I would like to see the Gen2 Supercars being implemented into the Super2 Series along with the older models, which would will be interesting to watch in 2023. Overall, the Supercars organisation needs to go back to basics and have a look at what it can improve across the series as a whole because as a fan we need more cars on the grid and fast. Make it more exciting to watch as a fan!

Tim Blanchard, who is the privateer team owner in Supercars commented recently in a Speedcafe.com interview,

“They removed a lot of sensors from the cars last year, which saved us a lot of money in terms of the staffing requirements, but then they’ve slowly crept them all back in, which has meant we’ve had to carry an extra head this year we haven’t budgeted for. Some of the smaller teams probably need to be listened to a bit more about what actually saves us money, I think that’s what you need to reward the true racers.” Check out the article for more commentary on this topic.

Do you agree with Tim Blanchard? Or do you think the Supercars product just needs a bit of a landscape style revamp and bring back a bit of an early 2000’s style vibe to the category?

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, but what I’d like to know is do you think Supercars needs to dig a little bit deeper to bring back some more entertainment on a weekend? Let me know in the comments below.

DH