The six teams in the Victorian capital could be leaving the state in a matter of days as other parts of the country begin to close their borders.
Kelly Grove Racing, Tickford Racing, Walkinshaw Andretti United, Team 18, Blanchard Racing Team and Erebus Motorsport are based in the Victorian capital.
Should the teams move temporarily, it would likely rule out this weekend’s Winton SuperSprint.
However, it would ensure that other events like the Darwin Triple Crown could take place in mid-June with no border issues in case the situation in Victoria continued to deteriorate.
South Australia has already closed its border to anyone who has been in the greater Melbourne area and others have put strict measures in place on exposure sites, including hotel quarantine in Queensland.
The biggest threat to supercars is the Northern Territory closing its borders with Melbourne ahead of the Darwin Triple Crown next month.
The Triple Crown, a big ticket for supercars, kicks off in 16 days, which means teams will have to leave Melbourne tomorrow at the latest to clarify any 14-day isolation or quarantine requirements.
Given that the Northern Territory government is allocating significant funding to the Hidden Valley event, it makes sense that it should take precedence over this weekend’s Winton race.
Another plan in the works is for the Winton event to take place this weekend and then the Melbourne teams to go elsewhere instead of returning to base.
However, this plan relies on other states only closing their borders with Greater Melbourne, not Victoria as a whole, as has been the case with past outbreaks – and is therefore less likely.
As of now, the Winton event has not been officially postponed or canceled, which means the teams in Queensland and New South Wales are still working on traveling south in the coming days.
However, Supercars has instructed travel teams not to come through Melbourne Airport and instead use Sydney, Canberra or Albury Airports.
The Benalla Auto Club, owned and operated by Winton, is working to ensure fans are fans of the event based on their latest advice.
“Our advice this morning from the Victorian Government’s Regional Events Team is that the Winton SuperSprint can run as normally as a Tier 1 approved public event,” he announced on social media this morning.
Melbourne’s teams spent more than 100 days on the road last year as part of a second wave in the city that took place in June.
The teams landed in southeast Queensland when the shortened season ended and didn’t return home until after the Bathurst 1000 in October.
