2020 Radical Australia – News of the cancellation of the proposed Bathurst International event set for Mount Panorama on November 13-15 has finally put paid to the 2020 Radical Australia Cup season, the challenges of completing events impacted by tightening restrictions and ongoing border closures just too big a hurdle to overcome.
Scheduled to be a stand-alone feature race for all models and classifications of Radical sports cars, the Bathurst event had been green-lighted by Motorsport Australia (MA) and the Australian Racing Group (ARG), with a big field of entries expected to close out a challenging season on a high.
“The last few weeks have been a real rollercoaster,” Category Manager Karl Reindler confirmed.
“We’ve been in constant contact with ARG and Motorsport Australia as we pushed to open up the event to all MA-approved Radicals (SR8s, homologated SR3s and non-homologated SR3s) and we’d received the sign off to begin promoting the race, but there was also an underlying condition from ARG that they needed to get the go ahead from Bathurst Council and the New South Wales State Government. Sadly that ultimately proved the decider.
The official comment from ARG reads;
Due to that fact that the majority of the competing teams are located outside NSW and the nature of these teams is such that the majority of them have other commercial businesses or interests that preclude them from being able to enter a mandatory quarantine period of 14 days either prior to or post the event (depending on their state of origin) the event could only operate successfully with the lifting of border restrictions and mandatory quarantine periods.
Unfortunately, the current COVID situation in Australia and the timeline for border closures remains fluid with no definitive criteria known for the critical NSW/Vic border and only proposed indicative dates which are very conditional on significant milestones and criteria for some other states as to when border controls and quarantine requirements may change.
The lead time required on transport, accommodation, local suppliers, broadcast teams, support services and infrastructure is now at a critical phase and this has resulted in there now being no other option other than to delay the debut of this new event until 2021.
ARG and the Bathurst Regional Council have now turned their attention to the 2021 Bathurst 6 Hour event, to be held on its traditional Easter long weekend date (April 2-4).
“Fortunately we are already scheduled to be a part of that [Easter] event, which was originally a part of our original 2020 calendar,” Reindler added. “On top of that, we’re also in discussion with MA about events for 2021 – all of which obviously revolved around border restrictions and ongoing pandemic rules – and we’d like to think that in the coming few weeks we’ll be able to release a tentative calendar and hope that the ongoing challenges with the virus start to subside.”
Despite the closure of the 12th season of Radical Australia Cup, Radical competitors still have more scheduled races on their 2020 calendars, with rounds three and four of the NSW SuperSports season scheduled for Sydney Motorsport Park (14 November) and Wakefield Park (12 December) to close out the year.
Track days have also been scheduled, whilst the annual Challenge Bathurst event is still locked in for 26-27 November. Those competitors interested in track days should contact Josh Peacock via email; [email protected]
For any teams or drivers interested in being a part of the 2021 Radical Australia Cup season please contact Category Manager Karl Reindler on email; [email protected]
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