Out going V8 Supercars Australia CEO Wayne Cattach has admitted what many of us have known for years, the category has become boring. Speaking at the L&H 500 at Victoria’s Phillip Island circuit Cattach said that the class had become a bit stale.

Cattach said that V8 Supercar racing had become a bit processional over the course of the last couple of years, and as all sports inherently do, the class needed to reinvent itself.

“I think that any product that has been around as long as ours needs to be critically looked at from time to time and obviously freshened up,” Cattach said. 

“We looked back from a clean sheet of paper and from the bottom up we are trying to build more entertainment for the fans.”

In a raft of changes designed to enliven interest in the series the class will see the introduction of a new soft compound option tyre. The three race sprint weekends have been abolished along with a change to the third part of the knockout qualifying system, which will see the return of the top 10 shootout at the insistence of series broadcaster Channel 7.

As previously announced the cars will run on 85% Ethanol in an attempt to give the series a slightly greener tinge.

Other key initiatives include mandatory refuelling in every race, the removal of specific pit stop windows, and a limit of 6 crew members across the prescribed line during any stop.

Are Australia's V8s going stale ?

Also flagged at the media conference was the addition of regular after race concerts to try and improve value for spectators and to try and appeal to a younger audience.

The moves come in light of a down turn in crowd attendance at most rounds and a substantial fall in TV ratings. 

Media buying agency Mitchell claimed earlier this year that Seven’s telecasts of the V8 Supercars had fallen by over 14% in 2008 a trend that’s worrying Seven especially in light of the dramatically increased costs of providing the telecast in High Definition Digital. The figures based on official OZTam ratings, also show that the V8 Supercar’s core audience is Men over 40, perhaps understandable given the decidedly 1970’s technology at the heart of the category.

In an era of Turbochargers, Variable Valve Timing Technology, All Wheel Drive with computer operated stability and traction control the big Aussie V8s are almost agricultural. In fact that’s just the way French Touring car star Alain Menu described them when he spoke to In Pit Lane two years ago. “They are like a tractor” he said, “A very fast tractor, but a tractor none the less.”

The drop in popularity will be one of the main tasks to be addressed by new CEO Cameron Levick.  Levick is the former  Vodafone executive  appointed to replace Wayne Cattach. 

Certainly if confidence is anything to go by he’s the man for the job declaring at his opening Press conference that his ambition was to take on the AFL and Cricket for the title of Australia’s number one sport.’

My ambition is to have threesome with “The Veronicas” in a 6 star hotel room overlooking the Eiffel Tower. I think I’ve probably just as much of a chance.