The Supercars championship will be a three-manufacturer race from 2026, with Toyota making the shock announcement that it will be joining the grid to take on Ford and Chevrolet.
And so the Melbourne Grand Prix comes to a close for another year, wrapping up one of the most exciting weeks in the automotive calendar, and the streets of Albert Park can fall silent, returning to pleasant suburban obscurity.
As modern performance cars have become faster and more complex, car companies have developed race track-specific driving modes as part of the search for the ultimate in speed and handling.
I was wrong. Last December I wrote a piece examining the very difficult season the Australian (V8) Supercars championship went through in 2023, with angst from drivers, teams and, most importantly, the one manufacturer seriously committed to the sport.
Ranking the best Formula 1 drivers across the championship’s 73 years is not a simple task. No matter which system we use, there will be upset, angst and lots and lots of discussion… and that’s great.
Aside from newly crowned champion Brodie Kostecki, there aren’t likely to be too many people that will look back on the 2023 Supercar season with true happiness. Instead of being the exciting start of a new era, this year’s championship turned into a stressful, complicated and, at times, ugly mess of complaints around the new Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang.
As the marbles roll to a halt at one of Australia’s most iconic racing venues and Mount Panorama returns to a state of relative peace, the Bathurst 1000 has wrapped up for 2023. It’s easy to see why the event has captured the heart and soul of Australians for so many decades.