Supercars competition to continue online

Australian sport has been almost completely locked down because of the COVID-19 outbreak. But the local Supercars series has worked out a novel way to keep entertaining its suffering fans.

Sport starved Australians will soon have a new way to watch the Supercars after all the drivers agreed to race online for the next three months.

The sport today announced that drivers would be competing in the All Stars Eseries. Drivers will login from home using the iRacing platform and will use the current ZB Holden Commodore and Ford Mustang platforms with liveries of their own choosing.

All Supercars drivers will compete in the new online competition.

The competition will be broadcast live on Fox Sports and Kayo. Supercars boss Sean Seamer says there has also been interest from overseas to show the racing.

The Eseries will start on April 8 and run for 20 weeks.

“This is about entertaining content. While we expect a strong and robust competition, ultimately this is designed to keep Supercars fans entertained during the period when we can’t race on the track,” said Mr Seamer.

“Fans watching from home will be able to hear the drivers during races, while a number of webcams will be set-up for broadcast as well.”

Supercars has said there will be a number of different formats including two race, endurance, night races and mystery rounds.

The virtual Supercars competition will be broadcast on Fox Sports and Kayo.

Supercars is still working on the exact combination of races but has said that Phillip Island and Monza would be the first two tracks used during round one.

Ace driver Jamie Whincup said he is looking forward to the series but says the younger drivers definitely have the advantage.

“My money’s on my teammate, SVG [Shane van Gisbergen], to be up the front,” says Whincup. “I know he races against a few of the guys down Pit Lane, even some of the Formula 1 drivers, so hopefully he’ll be representing the Red Bull Holden Racing Team on the podium.”

There will be a number of different formats and international tracks used,

Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin says he often practices on simulators between races and the move to a temporary online competition has the potential to draw even more fans into the sport.

Supercars isn’t the only competition pushing ahead with an online racing competition. Nascar had a successful first round of its simulated racing series, which is also hosted on the iRacing platform.

While the entire Supercars grid will take part in digital racing, many Formula 1 drivers — including Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen — declined to take part in that series’ official esports contest last weekend.

Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo preferred to drive a tractor on a friend’s farm, forcing his team to draft in pro golfer Ian Poulter and the team’s test driver Guanyu Zhou as replacements.

Zhou won a chaotic race live-streamed by about 350,000 people around the world.