Supercars ready to race

EDITORIAL

A new marque entering the fray and a new round in a new part of the world; these are the key developments for the 2026 Australian Supercars Championship, which revs up in Sydney this weekend.

This year’s series is of special interest to southern fans, as a new round is being staged "up the road" from us at Christchurch’s Ruapuna track. This will be the first time the Australian Supercars have raced on the Mainland, and having parked local disappointment that Cromwell’s Highlands Park missed out in its bid for the round, plenty of us from south of the Waitaki will be heading to Christchurch for the April 17-19 event.

The new marque entering the fray for 2026 is Toyota, with a Supercars version of the GR Supra coupe.

Taking on the dominant forces of Ford and General Motors (once Holden, these days Chevrolet) in the Supercars is a big ask; just ask the likes of Mercedes and Nissan, who have previously tried and failed. However, Toyota isn’t in the habit of entering a new series in anything but a fully committed way, and surely achieving success in the Australian Supercars can’t be any harder than doing so in NASCAR, where the Japanese brand is now well-established.

That commitment is underscored by the amount of work that has gone on since Toyota announced its plans to enter the category way back in 2024. Particular interest will centre on the GR Supra’s engine; unlike the road-going Supra, which deploys a heavily boosted straight-six engine, the racer packs a normally aspirated 5.2-litre V8 under the bonnet. It’s based on the 5.0-litre V8 Lexus engine and has been developed by Swindon Powertrains in the UK.

Five Toyota GR Supra cars will feature in this year’s Supercars series, two being run by Walkinshaw Racing and three by Brad Jones Racing.

New Zealand fans have a particular reason to cheer Toyota on this year, because two of the three Kiwis contesting the full Supercars series will be driving the new machine.

One is Ryan Wood, who is team-mate to defending Supercars champion, Queensland’s Chaz Mostert, at Walkinshaw Racing. Wood is on the up as a future Supercars star, having picked up a race win and several podium finishes in 2025. This will be his third full season in the Supercars category.

The other is Andre Heimgartner, who is part of a Brad Jones Racing line-up that also includes Australians Cameron Hill and Macauley Jones. Heimgartner has raced in the Supercars since 2014 and has picked up some solid results over the years, including a couple of race wins.

The third Kiwi lining up in the Supercars this season is Matt Payne, who will once again race a Ford Mustang as part of the Grove Racing outfit. Payne had an excellent 2025 season in the Supercars, winning several races, including — most memorably — the Bathurst 1000. He should be a series frontrunner again this year.

It’s going to be fascinating to see how the new GR Supra shapes up against the established Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros. At the time of writing, there’s been limited pre-season testing from which to draw comparisons, though two major sessions were scheduled to run in the second part of the week just past, at the Sydney track that will be used this weekend.

Looking ahead, the grandly named Christchurch Super 440 will be the fourth round of the series, running the weekend after Taupo plays host to the third round.

I warmed up for the Supercars season by keeping an eye on last weekend’s Bathurst 12-Hour GT endurance race.

It was a cracker of an event, but marred by what could have been a tragic accident when two backmarkers struck trouble at the top of the mountain, and the safety flags were very slow to be deployed. As a result, the leading cars arrived on the scene with little if any warning, and race leader Ralf Aron ploughed into one of the stricken cars at close to full speed.

The race was then red-flagged and stopped for nearly an hour. Aron ended up crawling out of his car and was transported to hospital. He was later reported to have suffered two fractures to his back.

Understandably, all of this took the gloss off what was a tight finish to the race, which was won by Maro Engel, Maxime Martin and Mikael Grenier in a Mercedes-AMG GT.

I was also keeping an eye on Shane van Gisbergen’s fortunes at the Daytona 500 last weekend. The Kiwi qualified well and had enjoyed a stint in the lead but was then caught up in a massive 17-car pile-up. He was at least able to continue, but his car was damaged, and he finished well down the order.

To be frank, while I appreciate it takes immense skill, NASCAR racing on the big ovals like Daytona is a form of motorsport that leaves me quite bemused. It’s certainly popular, with a crowd of 150,000 there for race day.

That figure got me wondering how big the crowd might be at Ruapuna for the Supercars. When Taupo hosted the Supercars for the first time in 2024, crowd attendance was 67,000 over the three days. Surpassing that figure will be a key aim for the Ruapuna organisers, and should be achievable.