Is the glamour and glitz over the top?

Let’s face it, we all loved the Supercars night racing at Sydney Motorsport Park in the weekend and we want more. It had all the right ingredients. One 300km race with 300 points on the line making it a pivotal championship race in the season. Great support races with the Carrera Cup and Australian GT’s racing into the twilight. Then the main event and lots of glamour and glitz, driver introductions, the cars rolling out onto the grid, a superb race between title rivals Scott McLaughlin and Shane van Gisbergen and a fireworks show.

What made it even better for Kiwi viewers that stayed on this side of the ditch was that we got to watch the Crusaders win the Super rugby title before switching over to watch the Supercars. The timing was perfect and we had some superb Saturday evening entertainment.

And entertainment it was at the Sydney Motorsport Park. It was a show from start to finish. Everything timed to perfection with a crescendo building up to the start of the race. But was all the glamour and glitz just a bit over the top?

There’s no doubt that given the right entertainment package, fans will turn up in their droves to events or switch over to the right TV channel. Arguably Supercars, like all top sporting events, are in the entertainment business and not motor racing (more of that in another article). It’s ‘bums on seats’ that pays the bills. Evening races will also open up opportunities for motorsport fans in the Northern Hemisphere to tune into on a Saturday morning.

You see the concern that I have with any sport event and promotion is the more it becomes orchestrated the more it shifts away from true reality.

While I love Formula One, most of the language that comes out of a drivers mouth is prepared and to some degree orchestrated. Notice the post race interviews where a driver has their ‘marketing’ person behind their shoulder also recording every word they say. Such is the huge amount of money tied up in the F1 entertainment business that what their drivers say could have an affect on a team’s income, particularly from sponsorship.

Supercars is the best racing we have down under and at the moment we can still relate to many of the drivers. Many in motorsport have grown up with these drivers at kartsport meetings as kids right through to domestic V8 series.

Orchestrate the event but let’s not control the entertainers. How many coaches can break-dance like the Crusader’s Scott Robertson?

Remember those 13 words that gave Scott McLaughlin notoriety with Supercar fans after achieving a podium at Adelaide in 2014.

“I just plucked it in first, gave it some jandal and f… yeah,” It was genuine, from the heart and said it all!

Let’s create and build entertainment but let’s not lose spontaneity from out drivers.