Supercars clarifies denial of Garry Rogers Motorsport REC deadline

Supercars Championship CEO Sean Seamer has explained why an extension for Garry Rogers Motorsport (GRM) to retain their Racing Entitlement Contracts (REC) wasn’t granted after it was announced last week that the Melbourne-based team will leave the category after 24 years.

GRM sold one REC to Matt Stone Racing and the other back to Supercars last week as it steps away from the sport, team boss Garry Rogers citing a denial for an extension to make a business plan before the REC deadline as a catalyst for their departure.

Seamer moved to clarify why the Supercars stalwarts weren’t provided an extension, saying that an earlier team owners meeting in June showed teams were against extending the deadline and to do so for GRM would’ve been unfair on everyone else.

“We had a conversation with all of the teams about changing the deadline at the Darwin (June) team owners meeting. There was no support for changing it,” Seamer said.

“In order to give someone an extension, all of the teams need to agree to moving the deadline. We have to treat everybody equally under the REC. That is a rule that’s written into the REC – Supercars must treat all teams equally.

“It’s impossible to extend a deadline when we’ve already received entries from other teams.

“We’d already had requests for deadline extensions from other teams, at the very last minute, because not everybody enters knowing that they’ve got their sponsorship done for next year.

“It’s been tough, because a lot of the (Supercars) team feel like, or have been made to feel like, they’ve intentionally disadvantaged a legend of the sport, which we haven’t.”

The category CEO added that an extension on the deadline for all teams would make it too hard for new or expanding outfits to have time to realistically prepare for the next season.

“If you start pushing the deadline out, you make it too hard for other people to acquire another REC or come in new, which is why the deadline is set where it is,” Seamer added.

“Even if we did it for everybody… assume that all teams had agreed that they were going to extend the deadline, it’s late already for guys who need to be out there testing in February next year.

“If you extend that deadline you make it extremely hard for people who are trying to find more staff and buy a new car and expand their teams, let alone teams that are trying to move cities, let alone teams that might be considering coming in for the first time.”

GRM will still play a part of the Australian motorsport landscape as they continue in the TCR Australia series and prepare the field of S5000 open-wheel machines which made their racing debut in September.