CHANGING GEARS

TALK of a revved-up GC600 built around twilight motor-racing through floodlit streets of Surfers Paradise and Main Beach is exciting.

If the Gold Coast is to be brutally honest as it navel-gazes and contemplates one of its key major events, it will acknowledge its Supercars street racing risks a slide into a “same old, same old’’ category.

The irony in that of course is that even though the format has been much the same for years, every race through the high-rise canyons has been different. The high-speed thrills have been nail-biting, but interest is apparently waning. Too much of a good thing? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the event is due for reinvention.

So it is heartening organisers are looking at a radical shake-up involving racing under lights, making the GC600 the first nighttime street race in the country.

Motorsport veteran and Bathurst winner Paul Morris says “we need to bring the party back’’ because that has been the Gold Coast’s point of difference. He is right. The Surfers appeal has always extended beyond the track, with thousands coming because this is a party town. For that reason, the Supercars decision to kill off the Miss Supercars program is puzzling and a poor move. But Supercars has still woken up to the huge need to initiate a revamp.

Whether street racing remains solely with the V8s is up for debate. Local MP John-Paul Langbroek yearns for the return of open-wheeler racing. So do we.