Work underway on 2022 Supercars calendar

According to series CEO Sean Seamer the schedule has been in the works for a number of weeks, as Supercars also looks to incorporate the mid-season introduction of its new Gen3 regulations.

All that's locked in at this point is the return of Newcastle to open the season, which is likely to be in late February or early March.

The Australian Grand Prix continues to be a mystery thanks to Australia's ongoing border restrictions during the pandemic, with a permanent move away from March to later in the season already on the table.

The trips to Darwin and Townsville will retain mid-year slots due to both weather windows and, in the case of the North Queensland event, the school holidays given the circuit build affects school grounds.

The Sydney SuperNight will also be in August, that having been flagged as the debut Gen3 race, while the Bathurst 1000 will continue in its early October window.

"I can tell you that we’ve already started on it," said Seamer. "We’re about three our four weeks in to the preparations for next year’s calendar.

"As you would expect, we’ve started consulting with each of the track owners and relevant state authorities.

"We’re looking forward to kicking off the season in Newcastle for the first time, which is going to be good. Beyond that, there’s a few interdependencies that we need to lock down, namely the AGP date.

"We’re hoping in the next six to eight weeks that we’ll be able to release a draft calendar to the teams and from there we can go."

The door is ajar for a re-expansion of the enduro season as well, with the Supercars Commission evaluating adding a second two-driver, long-distance race.

In pre-pandemic times the Endurance Cup always covered three events, the Bathurst 1000, the Gold Coast 600 and, traditionally, the Sandown 500 – although that race had been moved to The Bend for 2020.

However that was scaled back to just Bathurst on the revised 2020 schedule and is the same this season.

"That’s certainly something that we’ll be discussing with the Commission and how that might lay down around Bathurst," explained Seamer.

"It’ll ultimately come down to the rounds around Bathurst and the comfort levels of preparations for endurance racing on the Gen3 platform, given the introduction so close to Bathurst.

"Not to speak for the Commission, but certainly it would be a consideration for after Bathurst, not prior."

Seamer dismissed the idea that a pre-Bathurst endurance event may offer a valuable opportunity to test the durability of the cars before the biggest, most visible race of the season at Mount Panorama.

"These cars, the prototypes, will have over 10,000 kilometres on them at that point in time," he said.

"The teams would have had an extensive testing window open up in the earlier part in the year, so we will have all of our durability testing done prior to that."