How does two 5 round championships sound? Using the same planned dates in our calendar but the 2001 championship will consist of the first 5 dates and the 2002 championship the second 5 dates.

So the 2001 Championship will be - 
Round 1 - May 6 - Wanneroo
Round 2 - Jun 3 - Winton
Round 3 - Jul 1 - Qld. Raceway
Round 4 - Jul 29 - Mallala
Round 5 - Aug 26 - Oran Park

and the 2002 Championship will start in late 2001 with
Round 1 - Nov 4 (2001) - Winton
Round 2 - Nov 25 (2001) - TBA (NSW)
Round 3 - Jan 20 (2002) - TBA (NSW)
Round 4 - Feb 17 (2002) - TBA (VIC)
Round 5 - Mar 17 (2002) - Qld. Raceway

I see this as a great move as the planned summer series effectively starts one year earlier. Sponsorship may be easier for the privateers to come by for a 5 round championship than ten and if they do well in the first 5 rounder then that could give them more leverage to retain sponsors and maybe squeeze a little more out of them for the second 5-round series.

What could also be a positive move is that Australian racers based overseas could realistically come back to do the summer series and realistically have a chance of winning it as they would be able to compete in all or nearly all the races. Some will have important testing commitments etc. but others should be available. Maybe we might even get some American or British riders coming out in their off-season........

For the young blokes in the Australian Championship things will look decidedly brighter in this new format as if they do really well in this first championship they will be able to start rounding up overseas interest in them before the big teams have decided their line-up for the next year.

In what could be even a bigger coup for the series FoxSports has apparently agreed to broadcast a half hour highlights show of the Australian SuperBikes within the same time slot as their World SuperBike coverage. The battle now is for the organisers of the series to come up with enough money to produce the footage for FoxSports to show.