This year’s Supercars championship could run into January if that’s what it takes to crown a winner.
The series is suspended due to the coronavirus outbreak with only the season-opening Adelaide 500 completed.
Supercars chief executive Sean Seamer is however still confident there is enough space in the back end of the year to complete the full calendar – even if that means racing in January.
“We’re obviously fortunate in that our calendar was quite spaced out when we started the year,” Seamer told the Loud Pedal Podcast.
“We had a break for over the Olympics, which aren’t happening, so we’ve got some flexibility around July-August-September in the lead-up to Bathurst that we wouldn’t necessarily have.
“We’ve got experience from last year around doing back-to-back rounds. We did Tassie in to Philip Island, so look for us to go back-to-back, look for us to do whatever we can to get this championship away and that includes going into early next year.”
What the minimum number of events would be to crown a champion is yet to be formalised.
Current government restrictions on gatherings over 500 people as well as closed borders both domestically and internationally make holding events at this stage impossible.
Seamer said his team was working on getting the number of necessary people at an event below that threshold to run in a TV-only format as soon as possible if restrictions ease.
“If you look at current team sizes, the number of guys working on each car, then you look at the TV crew, you look at the officials, you look at security – just that basic fundamental group pushes us up over 500,” he said.
“So the team’s working really hard to get that number down so that even if we’re still dealing with the situation where only 500 people are allowed in one place at one time for an outdoor gathering but we are able to cross borders, that we can get going again with a TV-only product as soon as possible.”
Seamer said staff not currently needed for work are clearing annual leave and while he was optimistic teams would ride out the crisis, he was mindful “everybody’s going to have to take it on the chin in order to survive and come out the other side”.
