V8 Supercars has bowed to pressure for more entertaining racing, giving drivers an extra set of soft-compound tyres for the upcoming Darwin round of its championship.
The tyres will be for the second 60km Saturday sprint at the Northern Territory's Hidden Valley track on June 20.
There has been criticism from spectators and TV viewers, and concerns within the V8 Supercar community, at the processional racing on Saturdays of the SuperSprint rounds because of the limited number of tyres allocated to teams this season.
V8 Supercar chiefs resisted calls before the last round at Winton in Victoria to roll the two Saturday 60km sprints into one 120km race. They allowed an extra set of tyres for Friday practice from Winton, giving the day's times some meaning instead of drivers trundling around on worn rubber and being overly careful to save tyres for the weekend's racing. The extra sets of Friday tyres have to be handed back to series supplier Dunlop at the end of the day.
In Darwin the V8 Supercar field will run on Dunlop's hard-compound rubber in Saturday's first sprint and the new-issue soft rubber in the later 60km sprint. On the Sunday, June 21, when there is one 200km race, the cars can use a combination of hard and soft rubber.
The longer Sunday races have been much less predictable and more entertaining, especially because of teams employing different strategies.
Each V8 Supercar will be allocated a total of three sets of hard tyres and two soft sets for Darwin. They will have to qualify and race on hards for Saturday's first race and the same with softs for the second. They can re-use Saturday's hard rubber on Sunday but not Saturday's soft tyres – only the other, still-fresh soft set.
Four SuperSprint rounds are on the calendar beyond Darwin, with the V8 Supercar Commission to decide the tyre rules after the NT experiment.