(Reuters) – Races scheduled to be held in New Zealand and Perth in the Supercars Championship have been cancelled while the Bathurst 1000 has been shifted to November as pandemic restrictions forced the series to reconfigure their 2021 calendar.
Bathurst, the series’ most high-profile race, had been scheduled to run from Oct. 7 to 10 but will now be held from Nov. 4 to 7 due to COVID-19 restrictions currently in place in New South Wales.
“With the ever-changing COVID landscape, our teams and broadcast partners have agreed it is in all our stakeholders’ best interests commercially and competitively to move our premier event to a later date,” Supercars Chief Executive Sean Seamer said in a statement.
The recent reintroduction of travel restrictions between New Zealand and Australia mean teams will not be able to move across the Tasman Sea to compete while similar border closures in Western Australia have led to the cancellation of the race in Perth.
“Unfortunately, our event planned for Perth presents significant risk with the ongoing restrictions, so we’ve made the difficult decision to move it to the 2022 calendar,” Seamer said.
“Similarly, our Kiwi fans across the ditch will be undoubtedly disappointed to see New Zealand does not feature on the revised calendar due to the trans-Tasman bubble being suspended.
“These are challenging times for all sporting codes, which is why we have had to remain flexible with our calendar arrangements and make significant changes where required.”
(Reporting by Michael Church; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
