Supercars likely to push on with Darwin double-header

Despite a scare last week with a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on the horizon, the Supercars Championship looks set to go ahead with its back-to-back race weekends at Darwin’s Hidden Valley starting this coming weekend.

Supercars talks with the Northern Territory Government kicked into overdrive last week when the latter declared the City of Brisbane a COVID-19 hotspot after two locals returned illegally from Victoria which is now in lockdown thanks to an exponential increase in cases.

The declaration put the next two weekends of racing in doubt as both the Triple Eight team as well as championship leader Scott McLaughlin from DJR Team Penske are based in the Queensland capital region, making it impossible for them to travel to the NT without serving a mandatory 14 day quarantine.

Though the NT Government’s announcement was made on the borderline of the 14 day cut-off, all personell would have still had to isolate given they were in Sydney less than a fortnight before, another area which has been declared as a hotspot and which is seeing a second wave of cases.

A majority of team transporters are believed to have departed en route to Darwin late last week and a charter flight was expected to depart from Queensland to the Northern Terriroty today but has been delayed until tomorrow according to reports from Speedcafe and Motorsport.com

Supercars has not yet made any announcement about the upcoming rounds other than an acknowledgement of the NT Government’s hotspot declaration, saying “discussions are underway with all key health and government authorities… Supercars will release further information in due course”.

Australia yesterday recorded 641 new coronavirus cases with 626 of coming from Victoria as Queensland recorded no new cases and only 12 active throughout the whole state.