Quinn calls on Supercars to ‘spruik’ itself better

The amiable businessman, and nowadays the largest shareholder in Triple Eight Race Engineering, made his comments after the second full season of RACE ownership of the category.

He identified the saga over the 2024 calendar, and its eventual unveiling last month, as one example where he believes Supercars has not done enough to tell itself to the wider public.

“I don’t think it’s been exceptional,” said Quinn on the KTM Summer Grill about how RACE has run Supercars in 2023.

“I think they’ve lacked quite a bit and – I’m sure I said it last year – they need someone to spruik their business, to spruik what they’re doing, they need to amp it up.

“It’s very almost hush-hush and even the calendar this year that seemed to take forever to put out – again – and then, when it did come out, there was nobody telling the big story and selling the sizzle, and I still think that’s a fault.”

Next year’s calendar is similar to this year’s, with the debut of Taupo effectively replacing The Bend and a season-opener at Bathurst filling the breach left by the loss of the Newcastle 500.

“I think [Taupo] will be a good event for them, but we need to amp it up,” added Quinn.

“Newcastle’s gone, it’ll never come back, and maybe – and plenty of people have said it – but maybe they need to look at the existing tracks that are already there and telling people what they’re doing.

“In any business, you’ve got to tell… in fact, a lot of businesses bullshit what they’re doing, and V8s could do that as well. We could have a bit of bullshit going on.”

Quinn owns Taupo International Motorsport Park and one of the permanent circuits which used to be on the Supercars calendar, namely Queensland Raceway in Ipswich, just west of Brisbane.

He also owns the biggest team in the championship, and had positive things to say about the new-for-2023 Gen3 race cars despite a troubled introductory season marred by parity feuds.

“Some people have been underwhelmed by the cars [but] I think the cars are pretty good,” he declared.

“The cars have been confused with the parity issue [and] we shouldn’t take 12 months to sort that out.

“But, okay, we’ve now sent the cars off to America [for wind tunnel testing]; whatever comes out of that thing, that’s what it’s going to be, that’s it, end of story, and we need to get on with it after that.”

For more from Tony Quinn, check out the full episode of the KTM Summer Grill.