Supercars working on TV graphics fix

The category debuted a new bespoke TV graphics package during the Mount Panorama 500 broadcast, a move inspired by Formula 1 and MotoGP to create better brand identity.

There were, however, some teething problems across the weekend, particularly during Saturday's race where results often didn't update as positions changed hands and some drivers were incorrectly identified.

The issue sparked widespread criticism of the new graphics from fans on social media.

Speaking to Motorsport.com, Supercars TV boss Nathan Prendergast said the criticism was warranted and that "there's not a person in the country that's more disappointed than me".

However he also stressed the problems weren't a result of complacency from the broadcast team, rather an unfortunate side effect of introducing new technology in a live TV setting.

"We talked a lot about the new graphics package, but what I didn't explain was that it was more than a refresh of the look – it was a rebuild of the entire platform that runs the system," Prendergast explained.

"The old system was approaching 12 years old and we needed to develop something that had more functionality and could evolve with the package. It was all new. It's like racing cars; you can do as much testing as you like, but when it comes to the real thing you've just got to get miles in.

"Unfortunately on Saturday we had some critical failures when all of the data was coming in from the race. There's a huge amount of math and calculations running in the background wth where the totem sits and all the gaps and all the graphics that relate to it. Unfortunately it failed and took some stuff offline.

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"We did a huge amount of work to try and get it up and running as the race progressed, but it meant certain things like logo integration went offline.

"The biggest issue we had was that there's four different feeds. The complexities to run all that are huge.

"So when we tried to show certain things with headshots, for example, if the database isn't across all feeds it will reference what we had in their last. That's why we saw things like Will Davison's head on Shane van Gisbergen and things like that.

"The team worked around the clock all night on Saturday and Sunday to figure it out and we had a much better result on Sunday. But there will be a huge amount of continuous work to improve it moving forward."

Graphics glitches aside, the new broadcast deal got off to a successful start, Network Seven reporting a 28 per cent increase on first-round numbers compared to its predecessor Ten last year.