Will Brown leads the championship heading into Albert Park, format changes, title fight, Larry Perkins

The Melbourne SuperSprint is the sleeper round of the Supercars season.

Nestled in the jam-packed Australian Grand Prix schedule, the hotchpotch of short-burst sessions is worth more than any other round on the calendar, with 320 points up for grabs over four days.

They’re big numbers for a big event, with more than 450,000 people expected to stream through the gates to witness Australia’s biggest motorsport festival.

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And Albert Park is the fastest circuit on the calendar, with the average speed clocking in at 180 kilometres per hour, shading even Mount Panorama.

“It’s a really cool place to race,” David Reynolds said. “It’s a fun track, and they’ve improved the track a lot over the last few years.

“Down the back straight into the fast chicane we’re actually doing warp speed — it’s like 280 kays or something we’re doing, which is fast as.”

High speed, high profile, big points — the Australian Grand Prix is always a big weekend for Australia’s biggest racing championship.

A POISED CHAMPIONSHIP BATTLE

We’re only one round into the season, but already there’s a feeling that this year’s championship could be a classic.

Will Brown’s addition to the Triple Eight line-up has been almost entirely seamless. The former Erebus star finished second and first at the season-opening Bathurst 500 to emerge from the first weekend of the year with the title lead.

It was a clear statement of intent directed to new teammate Broc Feeney that the newcomer means business.

“It’s an awesome start to the year,” title leader Brown said. “To make the switch over this year, there were a lot of unknown and probably for the team as well with me as a driver.

“I was really excited to be able to repay them at the first round and get a win and a second place and have such a strong weekend. Hopefully we can keep that rolling throughout the year.

“I’m absolutely stoked with where I’ve landed and all the guys I’m working with.”

But Feeney offered Brown stiff competition. The pair shared the two pole positions, and only a slow start and early scuffle on Sunday prevented the incumbent from challenging the newcomer that afternoon.

This weekend Feeney returns to the scene of his first 2023 victory. Coming on Sunday before the grand prix, the win was the culmination of a strong, consistent weekend that set the tone for his title challenge.

The Gold Coast native knows how to be quick in Melbourne and should be expected to fire back.

Chaz Mostert shared both Bathurst podiums with the Triple Eight teammates and will be a key part of the equation.

His revitalised WAU Mustang looks the part for a title challenge, and already a four-time Melbourne winner, the 326-race veteran must surely feel like this could finally be his year.

With so many points on the line this weekend, the door is open to doing some early damage.

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THE LARRY PERKINS TROPHY

This weekend will see the awarding of one of the sport’s key pieces of silverware, the Larry Perkins Trophy.

The trophy was inaugurated in 2018 — the first season in which the Melbourne SuperSprint was eligible for championship points — in honour of six-time Bathurst 1000 winner and 11-time grand prix entrant Perkins.

It’s awarded to the driver who scores the most points at the Supercars-F1 crossover event, and as the grand prix has grown in stature, so too has the allure of claiming outright victory in Melbourne.

The Australian Grand Prix has become the biggest round on the Supercars calendar.

While the Bathurst 1000 holds an unimpeachable place in the sport’s folklore, racing alongside Formula 1 guarantees the Supercars its biggest TV audience of the year and comfortably its largest crowd, with an estimated 444,631 people attending last year’s event and more expected this weekend.

By sheer numbers alone there is no bigger platform for Australia’s premier racing category.

“Obviously Formula 1 is the world stage,” said Reynolds, a winner in 2018. “It’s very cool to watch it all happen and be part of it, because I’m a huge F1 fan.

“I go home and watch all the races, watch Drive to Survive — everything — and then a few months later I’m there on the same track racing in the same vicinity.

“It’s a really big event for us. Huge exposure, the world stage — being a part of Formula 1 is a fantastic thing for us.”

Mark Winterbottom has twice swept the points at the Australian Grand Prix, though the 2015 champion was in his Melbourne pomp before the inauguration of the trophy.

The 42-year-old said the grand prix was one of his favourite events.

“Although we’re not the spectacle event, we sure have a purpose here,” he said. “Championship points, sponsors, friends and family — all that sort of stuff — plus ego of race drivers trying to get race wins.

“If you can win a race it’s great. If you can win the round, which obviously gets you the Larry Perkins Trophy, it’s even better.

“It’s those guys that built our sport — the Perkinses, the Moffats, the Johnsons, the Brocks, all those guys — so when you can win something that has their name attached to it, it is a little bit more special.”

AN UNUSUAL FORMAT PAYING BIG POINTS

The uniquely dense on-track schedule at the Australian Grand Prix means the Supercars will again run to a novel one-off format this weekend.

Teams will get just two half-hour practice sessions to hone their cars on Thursday, when they’ll share the track with only the Porsche Carrera Cup.

Two 15-minute qualifying sessions will follow in the late afternoon, setting the grid for the two 105-kilometre races on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon.

Two 15-minute qualifying sessions open the day on Saturday, setting the starting order for the two 80-kilometre races later that day and on Sunday morning.

The inclusion of the Carrera Cup, Formula 2 and Formula 3 along with the onerous track lockouts required by Formula 1 have necessitated the unusual Supercars schedule, the likes of which won’t be seen again this year.

Adding complication is that the series has been evicted from pit lane in favour of F2, meaning garages will be inaccessible during sessions. Strict run plans during practice will be required to get the most out of the precious time.

“What we’ve got to focus on is changes that are in 30 minutes — probably four outings of two laps,” Winterbottom said. “Quick changes that are done with shifters and spanners and T-bars and stuff like that as opposed to the big geometry changes.

“We need to make sure our rollout car is good and we’re just tuning. That’s the plan.”

But that’s easier said than done at a track as quick and as risky as this.

“I’ve won races there before, been on pole a few times, had a lot of success there,” Reynolds said. “It’s a very difficult track to get your car in the window.

“But it feels amazing once you get in the window and you can do a good lap.”

With 320 points available this weekend including bonuses for pole — the most of any round in the championship — there’s no room for the teams treat this as anything other than a critical round.

AN OUTSIZED IMPORTANCE ON QUALIFYING

The format will work to place additional importance on qualifying, which will be crucial to a good result.

Already the stats make clear that starting high on the grid is imperative to victory, with 15 of the last 16 races having been won from the first two rows.

Thursday and Friday’s 19-lap races will time out at 40 minutes. Saturday and Sunday’s 14-lap races will be capped at half an hour. That means there’s even less time to recover from a poor grid place.

The sport’s eviction from pit lane means there’ll also be no pits stops in any of the four races. They’ll be straight sprints without strategy, complicating any planned recoveries.

“It’ll be the first time in a long time we haven’t had pit stop races for the grand prix, which I’m kind of not looking forward to,” Reynolds said. “It puts you in a very, very high pressure situation in qualifying.

“Qualifying is going to set up your race. If you can qualify well, you’ll probably race well, because the races are too short to make any difference, whereas before, when we had pit stops, you could have a different strategy — pit early, pit late or whatever.

“Qualifying is so important. If you see all the people that qualify up the front, they’re big smiles. All the people that are down the back, they know that their race is pretty much shot. They’ll be all sad.”

The lack of pit stops will force races to be red flagged in the event of rain — not currently on the radar but always a risk in autumnal Melbourne.

The lack of extra rubber will also put additional emphasis on tyre management for those hoping to grid out victory at the super fast circuit.

“Andrew [Edwards, race engineer] has been running me through,” Brown said. “He had the king of saving tyres last year, SVG, so he’s been making me do a bit of homework.

“I feel pretty confident after the first round that we can go there and do a good job.”