The Bathurst 1000 is the Grand Final of Supercar racing in this country, agreed?

Just like in the AFL, NRL or A-League the Grand Final is the pinnacle of that sporting code’s competition, the one match everyone wants to win, the culmination of the season.

So why isn’t the Bathurst 1000 the actual Supercars Grand Final?

Of course, it once was the final event of the year back when we called them Touring Cars.

But it hasn’t been that way for decades, yet the perception persists still among the wider populace that the motor racing season is all over at Bathurst.

Bathurst, and I am talking here specifically about the Supercars event, is just about unique among major sporting events in Australia.

Every year I continue to be astonished at the number of people who engage me in conversation about the race in the days after, people who don’t see a single motor race through the rest of their year.

Not even the Australian Grand Prix has the casual viewership that Bathurst enjoys, it’s almost like watching Bathurst every year is an ingrained tradition among Aussie families handed down from generation to generation.

You just don’t get people with barely a casual interest in the sport watching the AFL, NRL or A-League Grand Finals, yet you do with Bathurst. It’s remarkable, and we should be thankful, because it keeps our sport on the map here in front of the broader Australian population.

Bathurst is the one event the general public seems to relate to, and while they don’t watch every second of it, they drop in and out during the day, and make sure they’re sitting comfortably on the couch for the closing laps.

Once it’s run and won, the vast majority of unengaged viewers literally and metaphorically turn off to the sport for the year.

But what if we changed the Calendar, and made Bathurst a true Supercars Grand Final?

Up front, let me say that in reality changing a Calendar like Supercars’ is a slow and tortuous process that no-one envies … there are so many vested interests, traditional dates, and existing agreements that simply can’t be changed.

It’s impossible to just wave a magic wand and suddenly be able to put an event exactly where you’d like it.

But let’s pretend that we can wave that magic wand and change the Supercars Calendar … what would we do?

There would be little argument about opening the season at the event formally known as the Clipsal 500 which, if the SA Government is smart, will be renamed the Adelaide 500.

And we’re agreed, at least for the sake of this exercise, that the season would finish with the Bathurst 1000 Grand Finale.

But with Bathurst being the last race, we have to reshuffle the Endurance Cup around, and given the car-killing nature of the Gold Coast event, I would think that Sandown should be the penultimate round, and then Gold Coast two weeks before that.

At least while we still have Sandown, anyway.

But back at the start of the year.

Let’s go from Adelaide to Newcastle and then on the Australian Grand Prix, to really kick off our Supercar season with a bang. These three big high-profile events would really get the momentum rolling.

I’d then go off-shore, across to New Zealand for two (yes two!) back-to-back weekend events at Hampton Downs on the North Island and Highlands Park on the South Island.

Pukekohe might be the traditional home of Supercars in New Zealand, but I think a refresh wouldn’t hurt and Hampton Downs is only down the road.And having a second event in New Zealand makes perfect sense, with Highlands Park the obvious South Island locale.

Given you’d just spent a couple of weeks away from the limelight here in Australia, you’d want to make a noise again when the series returned to our shores.

So I’d suggest heading to Townsville for what is a mega event up there and one that gets a surprising amount of coverage in the New South Wales and Victorian markets, usually because it provides spectacular action.

From there you’d tick the Phillip Island box before the weather gets too bleak, then make the long drive across the Nullarbor to Perth and, finally, up to Darwin to wrap up the opening stanza of the season.

As is now established, there would still need to be a mid-year break – four to six weeks depending on what is viable for the calendar and teams – before everyone reconvenes for the run home.

In my opinion you’d restart at Queensland Raceway (if only to distance it from the Townsville & Gold Coast races in the Queensland market), then take in the Sydney Motorsport Park, Tasmania and Winton weekends, before capping the season with the three Endurance Cup rounds at Gold Coast, Sandown and Bathurst.

I’d also love to see a round at the Singapore Grand Prix but that date clashes with Sandown this year, and there’s doubt about the event happening at all in 2018.

And if 17 Supercar race weekends is too much, we could trim a couple … Queensland has three rounds on the Calendar and could get away with two, and  Victoria has four … though I am afraid the reported demise of Sandown will probably take care of one of those.

If I could add one locally, funnily enough it would be Canberra … though not in the middle of winter, please guys!

Here’s what our revised Supercar Calendar would look like:

• Adelaide 500 – Mid February
• Newcastle – Late February / early March
• AGP – Mid March
• NZ1 – Early April
• NZ2 – Early April
• Townsville – late April
• Phillip Island – mid May
• Perth – late May
• Darwin – early June
• QR – early August
• SMSP – mid August
• Tasmania – early September
• Winton – mid September
• Gold Coast – mid October
• Sandown – late October
• Bathurst – early November

This is all great fodder for kicking around down at the pub or arguing over a keyboard, but in creating this ‘fantasy’ Calendar I found the biggest challenge was trying to make it work given the regional climatic conditions in Australia we have to contend with.

But I have a solution for that too … lets go racing in summer!

Rather than race through the winter just because it’s the same timeframe the rest of the world races in, why not take advantage of our glorious Australian summers and take to the tracks then?

Think happy crowds in holiday mode, twilight meetings, good times … summer racing makes a lot of sense, which must be why the rest of the world does it..

Mind you, racing during Australia’s summer months would require a whole different Calendar!

WORDS: DAVID SEGAL
IMAGE: Mark Walker

David Segal is perhaps best known to current motor sport fans as the long-time manager of current Supercars Championship stars Craig Lowndes and Will Davison, and Super 2 Championship front runner Jack LeBrocq. A 30-year absence from Journalism ends this year with David’s ‘The Big Picture’ column here on The Race Torque.