New international events in the offing as teams agree to fresh commercial terms, 2027 Supercars calendar, overseas expansion, Oceania, Garth Tander, Sandown 500

Supercars teams have agreed to a plan to investigate racing outside Australia and New Zealand up to twice a year, according to six-time Bathurst winner and Fox Sports commentator Garth Tander.

The 2027 Supercars calendar was announced on Thursday after a month-long delay as the sport and the teams thrashed out a new commercial agreement to bind them together.

Part of the deal dictates how much money Supercars pays the teams based on the length of the calendar. Disagreement on the payment schedule briefly threatened to shrink the calendar back to 12 rounds.

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A fresh agreement has ensured the calendar remains at 14 rounds with scope for more races, but Tander says the pact also includes plans to take the sport outside Oceania for the first time in more than a decade.

“I think that probably the most exciting or encouraging aspect to come out of that is the agreement to allow the potential for growth for two extra international events,” Tander tells Fox Sports.

“We’ve done that in the past — we’ve obviously done the Middle East before, we’ve done China, we’ve done America — with varying degrees of success.

“But there’s no doubt that we have a product that’s world-class, and I think it’s about time that we took it back on the road again.

“I think that’s exciting and encouraging that everyone agrees that that’s the best way forward to continue to grow the sport.”

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Supercars dabbled in racing abroad for around a decade from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s.

China hosted the first Supercars race held outside Australia and New Zealand in 2005 at the Shanghai International Circuit, but a scheduling disagreement saw it removed from the calendar the following season and replaced with a round at Winton Motor Raceway.

The sport then added the Desert 400 in Bahrain to the schedule in 2006–08 and again in 2010, the last of which ran back-to-back with a race at the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. The Yas event was held for three seasons, with the 2012 event seeing Supercars join the F1 undercard, but Formula 1’s desire to add GP2 and GP3 to the bill subsequently saw the event scratched.

The last round abroad was in 2013, when Formula 1 competed at the Circuit of the Americas just months after the track’s inaugural hosting of the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. The event would last only one season, however.

Though the sport has periodically toyed with resuming its overseas push ever since, there has been little public, concrete progress on finding venues.

Last year former Supercars CEO James Warburton said there were two distinct plans the sport could pursue for international expansion.

One would be to race on the undercard of a major international series in the region — the Singapore Grand Prix was raised speculatively earlier this decade but came to nothing.

The other would be to set up a parallel championship based in Asia, thereby reducing the freight and logistics burden, albeit for a higher start-up cost.

Earlier this season Supercars established an internal committee to investigate pathways towards international expansion.

AUSTRALIA STILL A BALANCE

Warburton added at the time, however — and executive chairman Barclay Nettlefold has emphasised since — that the sport’s priority must be to optimise its domestic business regardless of any dreams of international expansion.

The 14-round calendar forced organisers to make some choices not only about the schedule but about which tracks were worthy of a date.

Queensland Raceway in Ipswich found itself pushed off the calendar thanks to the return of Phillip Island for the first time since 2019.

Tander believes the 2027 calendar did a better job of servicing more of the country than its predecessor.

“It’s tough, because there’s no doubt that south-east Queensland, particularly the western part of south-east Queensland, is a strong supporter of Supercars, and we saw that this year with a really strong crowd at Queensland Raceway,” he says.

“But in saying that, we already race twice in Queensland, with Townsville and the Gold Coast, so it’s a crowded market.

“It’s unfortunate that Queensland Raceway misses out. In a perfect world Queensland Raceway is on the calendar and we do 15 events, but the economics of it all obviously aren’t there at the moment.”

Phillip Island, in regional Victoria and around 140km south-east of Melbourne, is set to bring a different vibe to the calendar, particularly in its position as the penultimate round of the finals campaign.

“It’s very much going to be the weekend where you go to Phillip Island, middle of November, good weather, either camp down there or stay down there and enjoy Phillip Island for the weekend as well as go to the car race,” he says.

“I also like the fact that it’s a very different racetrack (to the other finals venues). You go Gold Coast, street circuit; Phillip Island, fast, flowing, traditional grand prix circuit; and Adelaide, street circuit.

“Whereas at the moment you go Gold Coast, Sandown, which is effectively a street circuit without the walls so close, and then another street circuit.

“I like the fact that it’s a different type of circuit layout. I like the fact that it will mix up what you need from the car and what you need to do as a driver through the finals campaign.”

NO MORE ENDURANCE RACES — FOR NOW

Phillip Island’s gain is Sandown’s loss, with the Melbourne venue set to lose its status as a finals race after this weekend’s event.

Instead the Sandown 500 will become the final round of the Sprint Cup and the precursor to the endurance rounds.

There had been some speculation that Sandown was set to resume its status as an endurance event in 2027, having lost that billing this year — the Sandown 500 has been held almost continuously since 1964, including its various forerunner events.

Its reintroduction as a two-driver event would have bolstered the Enduro Cup to three rounds, giving it greater importance to the overall calendar and opening up the battle for the minor silverware, which comes with automatic qualification for the finals.

Tander, however, thinks the Enduro Cup should remain at two rounds until the calendar expands further so as not to dilute the importance of the drivers championship.

“It’s a matter of percentages,” he says. “At 14 events, having three of those events as two-driver events is a reasonably large percentage of the championship that is requiring the work of two drivers.

“At 15 or 16 events, a three-event enduro does start to make more sense because it’s less of a percentage of the drivers championship and the teams championship.

“It’s obviously an important part of our series and our championship, the two-driver thing, but I even said this when I was a co-driver: I felt like three events was a large percentage of a drivers championship to be involved in.

“Getting that balance right is important. If we do expand the calendar in the future, then I think absolutely we need to look at three enduros and expanding the Enduro Cup, but we are a drivers championship — and a singular drivers championship — so getting that balance right I think is important.”