Supercars is moving fast on a Phillip Island return for 2027, with interim chief executive Barclay Nettlefold openly framing the southern Victorian circuit as a 15th-round addition rather than a replacement for any current venue and floating it as a potential Finals series host.
The push has been triggered by MotoGP's confirmation that 2026 will be the final Australian Grand Prix at Phillip Island before the two-wheel championship moves to a new permanent home in Adelaide from 2027. That decision frees Victorian government funding currently flowing through the Australian Grand Prix Corporation to support the bike event, money which Supercars is openly courting via the AGPC rather than through any direct ministerial channel.
Nettlefold did not bother with negotiating coyness when asked about the maths of a 15-round season this week. "The ultimate amount of racing for Supercars, in my view, is 15 rounds in a domestic and New Zealand calendar," he said. The current schedule sits at 14 rounds across Australia and New Zealand. Adding Phillip Island as a standalone round, rather than displacing an existing event, would meet exactly that target.
The Finals piece is what will excite long-time fans. The Bass Coast venue last hosted Supercars in 2019, when the championship still ran a sprint round there. Nettlefold suggested the venue's natural amphitheatre and camping infrastructure would lend itself to one of the season-deciding Finals events. "If it was part of our final series, would be amazing. We could open up the camping sites," he said.
That positioning would, on its face, sit awkwardly with Sandown — itself a recently re-established Finals venue — and with the existing Gold Coast and Adelaide Finals rounds. Speedcafe.com reports Nettlefold has stopped short of suggesting Phillip Island would displace any of the existing Finals dates, framing it instead as a fourth Finals fixture that could rotate over a multi-year cycle.
Two commercial hurdles need clearing before the calendar can be locked. The first is the Teams Racing Charter, whose payment formula was negotiated on the basis of a 12-round championship. Any event beyond round 12 currently triggers an additional payment to the participating teams, and an expansion from 14 to 15 rounds will require either a renegotiation of those payment terms or a one-off uplift for 2027. The second is the AGPC pipeline. With Albert Park's Formula 1 race remaining the dominant priority for Victorian motorsport funding, the AGPC will need to be persuaded that Phillip Island represents a continuing return on the state's marquee-event spend in a post-MotoGP environment.
Nettlefold has indicated to Speedcafe.com that he wants the 2027 calendar locked in by the end of June or early July 2026, which leaves roughly five weeks for the Phillip Island contract to be either signed or shelved. The circuit's track-resurfacing campaign that started in late 2025 has reached the front straight and will need to be completed before any Supercars test, but circuit operators are understood to be running the work to a programme that would allow a Supercars round as early as the second half of 2027.
For the championship, the prize is more than just a 15th round. Phillip Island has been one of the spiritual homes of Australian touring car racing since the Castrol 500 era, and the prospect of a Toyota Supra programme in its second season facing off against the Ford Mustangs and Chevrolet Camaros on the seaside ribbon would offer one of the marketing landmarks Supercars has been chasing all decade.
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