Motorsport Australia is optimistic it can expand the SpeedSeries calendar to the Northern Territory and Western Australia in years to come.
As it stands, SpeedSeries is largely based on Australia’s east coast with events split across Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland.
A greater national footprint is on the table for 2025 that could see the show taken to Hidden Valley Raceway in Darwin and Wanneroo Raceway in Perth.
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The revelation comes as Motorsport Australia earmarks stability with next year’s calendar.
Motorsport Australia hopes to release a new, eight-round calendar to the market by the end of July.
That release would be much earlier than last year’s, which was revealed in October and largely baulked by Supercars and its scheduling dramas.
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Several revisions were made thereafter to the SpeedSeries calendar with the TCR Australia Series calendar not finalised until earlier this year.
The governing body’s motorsport and commercial operations director Michael Smith spoke with Wide World of Sports at the latest SpeedSeries event where he outlined the plans for 2024 and beyond.
This year’s SpeedSeries calendar included trips to Symmons Plains, Phillip Island, Winton, Ipswich, Sandown, and Mount Panorama for the Bathurst 6 Hour and Bathurst International.
Smith said much of that will remain the same, although a question mark hangs over Winton’s place on the calendar.
Supercars has made plenty of noise about expanding its calendar to 15 events, and Winton has been rumoured to be part of that plan.
This year, SpeedSeries visited Winton effectively in place of Supercars.
It marked the first time the SpeedSeries suite of categories featured there since debuting in 2019.
Whether the rural Victorian circuit can host both Supercars and SpeedSeries on separate dates in 2024 is not clear.
In any case, Smith is targeting a four-to-six-week gap between events next year.
“I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily off the cards at the moment,” said Smith of a SpeedSeries return to Winton.
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“Like all things, we’ll go away after this weekend, we’ll have a look at it. Did it work for the fans? Did it work for the competitors?
“We’ve made no secret of the fact that we’d like to go to some new venues and Perth and Darwin are two venues that we’d certainly like to look at going to – maybe not next year, could be the year after – so we’ll explore those opportunities.
“So I’m not saying ‘no, we won’t come back to Winton’, but like all things we’ll review it after this round and see where we land.
“There might be a little bit of a shuffling of the deck chairs in terms of venues and dates,” he added.
“We haven’t really finalised all of that yet. You always want to go to the warm parts of the country in those windows.
“I think for the most part, we’ll go to many of the same venues that we’ve been to this year, but there could be some variances in the dates in that.”
Smith said he’s “pretty pleased” with how the 2023 season has run to date.
Although the SpeedSeries brand debuted last year, this year marks the first time all Motorsport Australia championships and Australian Racing Group events have run under one banner.
“Overall, we’re pretty pleased with this year,” he said.
“It’s the first year of the SpeedSeries brand (with Motorsport Australia) and I think in fairness, in previous years we’ve probably suffered a little bit from an identity crisis.
“Is it Motorsport Australia? Is it Shannons Nationals? Is it ARG? And I think certainly this year with the combined branding and the way that we’re approaching the events platform, has been really, really positive.
“The broadcast that we’ve got with Stan and Nine, I think has been really, really effective this year. So overall we’re really, really pleased with where we sit.”
A highlight of the season still to come is the season-ending Bathurst International and the Sydney Motorsport Park night event which precedes it.
Those events will form part of the TCR World Tour, which is expected to see a healthy group of cars head Down Under.
That could boost the grid to upwards of 30 cars for those two events.
“There will be a whole bunch of cars and international drivers coming out for the last two rounds of our championship here and they’re the best in the world,” said Smith.
“Purely from a sporting point of view, it’ll be good to benchmark our talent here against the best in the world
“From a holistic point of view, it’s just another world-class event in motorsport that we’re bringing to this country and that can only be a positive thing for the sport.”
SpeedSeries returns on August 11-13 at Queensland Raceway, Ipswich for its fifth event of the season.
That event will feature the TCR Australia Series, National Trans Am Series, GT World Challenge Australia, Porsche Sprint Challenge, V8 Touring Cars, and Australian Production Cars/GT4.
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The Australian Racing Group-owned categories which race solely on the SpeedSeries program are the TCR Australia Series, National Trans Am Series, and V8 Touring Car Series.
TCR and Trans Am feature at all SpeedSeries events, bar the Bathurst 6 Hour.
S5000, GT World Challenge Australia, and Touring Car Masters are split across SpeedSeries and Supercars.
SpeedSeries features other non-Australian Racing Group-owned categories including, but not limited to, Porsche Sprint Challenge, National Sports Sedans, Australian Productions Cars/GT4, and Formula Ford.
2023 SpeedSeries calendar:
Round 1: Race Tasmania, Symmons Plains – February 24-26
Round 2: Bathurst 6 Hour – April 7-9
Round 3: Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit– May 12-14
Round 4: Race Winton – June 9-11
Round 5: Queensland Raceway – August 11-13
Round 6: Sandown International Raceway – September 8-10
Round 7: Sydney Motorsport Park – November 3-5
Round 8: Bathurst International (TCR World Tour) – November 10-12
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