V8 Supercar decision mighty disappointing

THE WA Sporting Car Club is disappointed that the V8 Supercars have made a decision not to come to Perth this year.

What is more disappointing is that this was announced on Monday, February 8, despite the V8’s imposed deadline of February 9 and the fact that we still have not been formally advised by V8 Supercars as of Saturday February 13.

The main area of concern for the WASCC was a requirement to lock into a five-year agreement.

As each year has passed, the business case for the V8s has become increasingly marginal.

The June long weekend was always going to be a big ask, given the number of other motorsport events that were held that weekend.

This is in addition to the requirement for us to run two V8 events and pay huge V8 sanction fees of more than $1 million within seven months.

Nearly all our corporate clientele only budget for a once-in-a-financial-year V8 Supercars event.

The V8’s offer of assistance to help out with our upgrade and new track – as late as last week, our consultants were in Queensland in an attempt to work with the V8 and ascertain what they required to improve the in-field.

We were disappointed that we had to rely on the State Government to follow up on offers that were made by V8 last November.

These promises of assistance have not materialised and these improvements were supposedly to be in place for the 2011 V8 event.

It would be commercially irresponsible for the WASCC to accept the terms of the sanctioning agreement that the V8 were demanding.

The WASCC has made it clear that they can only commit to a deal that is in best interests of the club membership, a position supported by the State Government.

While the V8 have stated they have reduced the sanction fee in 2010, that fee would almost double (plus 90 per cent) over the five-year agreement.

(The) increase is difficult to justify, given the V8 have not committed to the minimum number of support events they would include in the program.

Based on the recent evidence – the number of competing teams or cars, attendance and subsequent falling revenues – there is no business case that can support the financial commitment that the club would have to make.

We feel these demands would put the club at great risk of incurring significant financial losses.

This would not be in the best interests of our members or for motorsport in WA.

Last year alone, we witnessed a dramatic drop in attendance numbers.

In 2008, we had around 65,000 attendees. Sadly in 2009 this has plummeted to around 32,500.

Further to this, we again witnessed the drop in V8 teams and cars competing, down to just 28 cars as listed this week on the V8 Supercars website.

This is all further compounded by a lack of V8 visiting support categories that spectators enjoyed at the 2008 event like the V8 utes, the Australian Formula Ford Championship and Australian Porsche Carrera Cup, just to name a few.

In 2009, we saw just 14 Minis as the V8 support act.

V8 drivers love our track, they love coming to Perth, and it is extremely disappointing that an eastern states company has made a decision to remove Wanneroo from their calendar.