By Mark Fogarty
Release date: June 27, 2021
Winton’s postponed Supercars lap is suspended for the end of next month – apart from another coronavirus crisis in Victoria.
The regional round, scheduled for May 29-30, was canceled after Melbourne entered its fourth COVID-19 lockdown.
The Winton SuperSprint has been postponed to July 31st to August 1st and although not yet officially confirmed, Supercars expects the event to take place.
Melbourne came out of tough lockdown last week and travel within Victoria is unrestricted.
Access from Queensland, SA and most of NSW is also free and covers all Supercars attendees.
With the Townsville 500 safe for teams from Melbourne from July 9-11, Supercars No.2 and event boss Shane Howard is confident that the series will take place at the Winton Motor Raceway in northeast Victoria at the end of next month.
“We have an appointment with Winton,” said Howard. “They are on sale and the postponement was actually well received by the fans – they understood the decision.
“We’re working with Winton to deliver this date.”
Howard stated that Supercars worked with authorities on the assumption that events will occur unless there is a major coronavirus outbreak.
“You can’t jump on shadows with COVID,” he said. “Trends are your friends, aren’t they? You can see if a situation is escalating or decreasing, and that helps identify where those decisions might be leading.
“We are in constant dialogue with all relevant health authorities and we can really work on that.”
The rescheduled Winton Round will take place in the middle of the Olympic Games in Tokyo and will be shown exclusively by Supercars’ free TV partner Seven.
Originally, Supercars had planned a winter break to avoid a conflict with the Olympics.
But the timing was right to put Winton back on the calendar without any major interruption.
Plus, there’s still a chance the Tokyo Summer Olympics – postponed because of last year’s pandemic – won’t happen.
In any case, the rescheduled Winton Round will fill an otherwise long gap between Townsville early next month and the Sydney SuperNight from August 20-22.
For more current Supercars news, see the latest issue of Auto Action. Also follow us on social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or our weekly email newsletter for the latest updates between editions.
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