The National Motor Racing Museum is a must-see if you're in the central west of New South Wales. It's on the outside of Murray's Corner at the famous Mount Panorama in Bathurst and celebrates the rich history of Australian motorsport. There's famous cars, bikes, memorabilia, so much to take in, including the spectacular immersive room. It gives you an amazing taste of the speed, the sound and the excitement of the mountain. The museums generally open six days a week and also during events, so visit their Facebook page or themuseum's bathurst.com.au website for further details. A motorsport podcast network production. Great to have you with me, it is Castrol Supercars Weekly. I'm Aaron Un and great to have you along on this Friday as we start to really rev up to next weekend's Repco Bathurst 1000. The great race is not too far away. Another addition on this edition though of Castrol Supercars Weekly, we have the official calendar drop of the championship for 2025. A change to the full course yellow system for Bathurst and a bit more to get into. Now Castrol's redjo to oil on the Castrol website is where you'll instantly know the best products to unlock the edge of performance in your car. Just search for redjo, the number two and oil and you can find out more. Okay, 2025 calendar, it's dropped, it's official, it's done. It's bigger, yep, 13 rounds for 2025, so there's one more than this year. Queensland Raceway is back for the first time in some years. Perfect time for that actually in August, a nice bit of Queensland sun around that time of the year. What else sticks out to me when I look at that calendar? And look, there was no surprises from what we had been hearing and what had been discussed around the paddock in recent weeks. City Motorsport Park will be the opener underlights, makes sense. I know it's not a big marquee street race to kick off the championship, but I don't think you need that all the time. Clearly the plan would be for Perth to be that moving forward. But underlight, super night, late February, weather should be good, that's good timing. Tasmania moving back into May, that's good as well. Sand down staying, that is great as well. No 500, the historian in me doesn't like it, but I get the deal. So the bend will be the 500, which we already knew. Sand out is going to actually take the place of Adelaide in terms of the positioning on the calendar. It will be mid November next year, single drive around Adelaide, which is mid November this year. We'll move back actually to the last weekend of November next year to round out the championship. So not a massive shock horror. Oh my God, something's changed at the last minute before this calendar was announced. These things are massive projects to pull together. And as much as we'd love to see these announced earlier, there's governments to deal with, sponsorships to deal with, television broadcast partners, they're actually really hard. They're very difficult having been involved behind the scenes over the years, knowing some of the ways that these things fall together. So well done to all, we wanted more racing, we've got more racing, we've got an extra round. It's a start. We want more, hopefully in the years to come, we can get that. Now, race formats, that's something that we're expecting will be announced next week. I presume at Bathurst, during the lead up to Bathurst, I'm expecting, well, obviously with 13 rounds, we're going to get more on track running. But I think that what I'm picking up is that there'll be more racing. So more races. I've seen it reported in other media outlets talking about two races on a Sunday and a race on a Saturday. I'm hearing it might be the other way around, two sprints on a Saturday and a longer race Sunday for what have been traditionally super sprint events. There might be some additional racing at marquee events as well. So there's all sorts of extras, but we wanted more, we're going to get more. That's the good thing. One more round. It seems like more racing and they're going to trade away some of that practice running for more racing to do that, which is important. So look forward to seeing how that all shakes out next week. Super two Dunlop series, a bit of a shuffle there, still at six rounds, but there's a few tracks that will return to the calendar that haven't had a run for a few years. So Sydney Motorsport Park, so there'll be at the opening round of the championship for the Repco Supercast Championship supporting that. They're going back to Tasmania, which is good because the Tassie round does need a bit of a support category bolstering and of course the return of Queensland Raceway is the other returning track on the Super 2 calendar, Townsville, Bathurst and Adelaide are the others that remain for another six rounds. But I'm getting the vibe that Super 3 just won't be a thing moving forward. It looks like all the cars will just be eligible and race in Super 2. Now, full course yellow, some changes for Bathurst that came just after we recorded our Bathurst 1000 preview episode earlier in the week. This was flagged with Craig Baird, the driving standards advisor for the championship on our race control pod post-sad. And when he told us that there was a move from some drivers, Cam orders pretty prominent in it to try to lift the speed of the full course yellow and speed limited running. Obviously it's sand down, it was 80 kilometers per hour. That's been changed, it will increase to 120 kilometers per hour at Bathurst. And there'll be no minimum lap mandate during those speed limited periods. So racing can resume as soon as possible once the danger has been cleared or the car that's stranded or whatever it might be that's caused the period. So that's good news. That's a big change from sand down and that should really help things. Now, if we can just get rid of that lucky dog and the wave by at some point, next year, that would be super too. Hey, can't have it all straight away, I guess, but we'll get there. Speed of getting there, the future of sand down international motor raceway, as it's officially called in Melbourne's looking rosy because overnight, this has been going for a while, there's been plenty of, what's the term, plenty of drama with the board of the Melbourne Racing Club. But overnight, John Kang has been appointed the new chair. Now, he's got a stance to save racing, leave racing, horses and cars at Sand Down, because he's saved our MRC group, has been taking a big stance against the redevelopment plans there. He is now in the chair. So that's looking rosier for the future of Sand Down, which I guess the death now has been. The death warrant's been signed a bazillion times over the last decade, but that would appear to be pretty positive news for motorsport fans for Sand Down. Moving forward, tell you what's positive too. Next week, Bathurst Raceway, so much going on around the place. Quick plug to the team at Team 18. Warren Luff and David Reynolds are going to go and host a trivia night on the Tuesday night in Bathurst. Have a look for the details on our website. I'm not sure if we're disqualified, can we turn up? Will we get kicked out? I'm not sure, but we might have to look at that. But where we won't be kicked out of is the Thursday night, because V8's lose live. Next week in Bathurst, we're back. Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre. Tony Cochran is our feature guest. And I've managed to grab a few extras to stop on by. Neil Crompton's going to stop by. And I've also twisted Mark Scafes arm. And I reckon Scafey's going to pop into. He's got plenty of stories about Tony Cochran. I'm sure Tony's got a few about Scafey as well. So we're going to have a part of fun. Tickets are on sale now. The show notes for this episode, just check the link there. That will get you to the BMEC website to be able to grab your tickets. Come along, have a bit of fun with our annual night. It's going to be a great way to spend the Thursday night of Race Week. If you don't have your copy of the Repco Bathurst 1000 official program, it's available online to buy. Now, I've got to tell you too, if you're going to be at the race, if you're heading up there, they will be available from the Repco Trackside Store at the bottom of the mountain and the top of the mountain. But if you're leaving sort of soonish to go to Bathurst, or if you're worried about ordering it now or tomorrow, and not getting it in time before you leave, best to go up there and buy one when you get to the track to make sure that you get a copy, or that you get it in time to be able to read it before the race event. So you can get all the latest and greatest in the info that, you know, there's plenty of great features actually. We love to make the Bathurst program, I guess a blend of heritage history, contemporary, great feature in there with Craig Lowndes, marking his 30th anniversary at Bathurst. Brad Jones, that quest to finally win. James Courtney's another who's on a quest to win. All the support category entry lists are in there as well. Plenty of reading, plenty of driver profiles too. You'll be absolutely word perfect with all the stats and all the bits and pieces that you need to know about the 26 cars and 52 drivers. In the great race this year. And now if you want to get more V8 Sloot podcast content, I've got some more ways for you to do this. So next week at Bathurst we will have our Bathurst daily pods to keep you updated with what's going on. At Mount Panorama with all the latest and the greatest of the news and info. And of course you can join our V8 Sloot podcast. Plus membership program, it's available now. You'll get ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and your chance to vote on future content and much, much more. Get to it now. The link is in the show notes. It's v8sloothe.supportingcast.fm. Thank you to all those who've got on board, really appreciate it. And yeah, get them all, get them all, just got to get them all. Anyway, right road trip next week to Bathurst for our V8 Sloothe team. It's going to be fantastic. If you're at the mountain, please say good day to our team. We'll be up there covering it for the website, with the podcasts. I'm going to pop up on the telly doing a couple of bits and pieces as well. So if you're going to be at the track, come and say good day. If you're staying at home to watch it, v8sloothe.com. That'll use the place to check back to for all the information that you'll need. It's going to be a big week at the mountain. I don't know how it seems to get bigger every year. It's just, I don't know, it just does. It just does. It is the great race. It is next week, and this has been Castrol Supercars Weekly. In the meantime, I'm off. Have a great weekend, and I'll chat with you next week from Mount Panorama. The National Motor Racing Museum is a must-see if you're in the central west of New South Wales. It's on the outside of Murray's Corner at the famous Mount Panorama in Bathurst, and celebrates the rich history of Australian motorsport. There's famous cars, bikes, memorabilia, so much to take in, including the spectacular immersive room. It gives you an amazing taste of the speed, the sound, and the excitement of the mountain. The museums generally open six days a week and also during events, so visit their Facebook page or themuseum's Bathurst.com.u website for further details.
