Supercars releases unsuccessful Bathurst pitch video

This is the video that Supercars pitched to the Bathurst Regional Council as part of its unsuccessful bid for a new event at Mount Panorama.

The category narrowly missed out on the rights to a new event at the Bathurst circuit last month, Australian Racing Group's bid for a TCR enduro getting the nod over a bold plan from Supercars to stage a motorsport festival-style event.

Supercars has now gone public with its pitch video, which outlines the key details of its proposal.

The bid is heavily based on the Superspeed concept first revealed by Motorsport.com back in June, including a hillclimbs, Supercars testing, a focus on the motoring industry and lifestyle activities such as a food and wine festival.

The video adds more detail to the concept, such as an international driver-only Supercars test session and an outright lap record challenge aimed at bringing the likes of Formula 1 and Le Mans prototypes to Mount Panorama.

The event was dubbed the Mount Panorama Festival of Speed, with its tagline – 'much more than just another race' – demonstrating how Supercars tried to position its bid against ARG.

According to Supercars CEO Sean Seamer, it was that radical difference between the two bids made the outcome less disappointing.

"There were two different ways of looking at it," he said.

"We felt like the Mountain doesn't need just another race, that it needed something different. But they've chosen a different strategic direction.

"I'm not concerned about it, it's not like there were two parties with the same concept.

"It would've been a lot of fun, I think. It would have been good for motorsport in Australia, but they chose a different direction."

Seamer is also not ruling out elements of Festival idea showing up at other events, particularly with the collapse of the Adelaide Motorsport Festival creating an even bigger gap in the market.

"I don't think it was predicated on being at Bathurst," he said.

"We just felt like, if you're going to do another event [at Bathurst] it needed to be something different.

"But, yes, absolutely, it could be somewhere else. We spoke about it [recently], that Australia still doesn't have that event, especially with the festival going from Adelaide.

"I feel like it needs something like that, and we can, given all the resources that we have at Supercars, whether there's a Supercars component or not.

"We feel like we can make that happen."

There will be five events held at Mount Panorama next year, with the Bathurst 1000 and Bathurst 12 Hour (run by Supercars), the Bathurst 6 Hour and the TCR enduro (run by ARG), and the standalone Challenge Bathurst sprint event.