FOUR-TIME Bathurst 1000 winner Greg Murphy is adamant that the best way forward for Supercars under new ownership is for its teams to concede their level of control over the championship.
A 65% slice of Supercars has been owned by private equity firm Archer Capital since 2011 with approximately 35% remaining controlled by the teams that compete in the Repco Supercars Championship.
Media reports over the last couple of weeks have placed a range of parties as involved in the bidding process for Supercars.
They include a Mark Skaife-led TLA option, the Australian Racing Group, the Peregrine Corporation (headed by Sam Shahin, owner of The Bend Motorsport Park and Mallala) and a consortium reportedly consisting of Boost Mobile’s Peter Adderton, BTCC chief Alan Gow, motorcycle legend Mick Doohan, SCT Logistics boss Pete Smith and Paul Morris.
Murphy told the latest episode of Repco Supercars Weekly that the new owners’ first move – whichever entity gets the nod – should be to strip back the influence of the championship’s teams.
“That, for me, needs to be gone: get rid of the team owners having control and decision-making over a whole host of things,” Murphy told Repco Supercars Weekly.
“They obviously deserve to have a fair stake in terms of revenue and return – you’re not going to give that away.
“We need to have team owners having their opinion but not being able to influence decisions because they’re their own worst enemy, in my opinion, and we’ve seen plenty of examples of that over the years.
Listen to the full episode in the player below!
“The team owners we’ve got now are fantastic, we’ve got a great mix of team owners in there, but they don’t often make the right decisions based on the best thing for the sport; they make decisions based on what’s best for them (and) that’s not what we need.
“We need a sport that continues to evolve towards a lower cost and what focus on what is right for the fans and what the fans want, not what the teams want.”
One area Murphy cited were the efforts in cutting the costs of going racing in Supercars.
“We’ve evolved these cars into being such expensive tools, and we’re now starting to claw that back and make changes away from the way the cars used to be with so many more open components to them,” Murphy said.
“But it’s taken too long, and that’s down to team owners slowing the process down and not wanting to make those changes because it doesn’t suit them. And we can’t have that anymore. We’ve got to get rid of that situation.
“We’ve got to get the platform of the car and what the premise of the vehicle is, and go: ‘That’s what it is, if you don’t like it well then too bad. You either want to be involved in the best form of touring car racing in the world, or you don’t.'”
Murphy will make a comeback to Supercars in October for the Repco Bathurst 1000.
He’ll drive a Boost Mobile-backed Commodore with countryman Richie Stanaway run by Erebus Motorsport and featuring Murphy’s famous #51.
