Adelaide 500 Supercar Event Set to Return after South Australian Labor Victory

Race two of round 1 of the 2020 Supercars Championship the Adelaide 500 in Adelaide, Australia on February 22, 2020. Photo by Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

The iconic Adelaide 500 Supercars event is set to be reinstated after Labor’s Peter Malinauskas was voted in as Premier of South Australia (SA) over Liberal’s Steven Marshall on Saturday.

Bringing back the event, which Marshall had canned in 2020 due to declining crowds, was one of Malinauskas’s pre-election pledges, and if all goes to promise, the 500 should be held in the first week of December, completing the 2022 Supercars season, Motorsport.com reported.

This comes after Malinauskas, and his Labor team took Saturday’s election with 40.4 percent of primary votes compared to Liberal’s 34.6 percent, as well as winning 28 seats in the 47-seat House of Assembly as opposed to Liberal’s 13.

“When Steven Marshall axed the Adelaide 500, I pledged Labor would bring it back if elected,” Malinauskas said in February.

“The return of the Adelaide 500 would deliver a much-needed boost to CBD hotels, cafes, restaurants, bars and the city economy more broadly.”

The race was held on the streets of Adelaide annually from 1999 to 2020, and in 2019 attracted 15,200 interstate and overseas visitors, injecting $45.9 million into South Australia’s economy.

Supercars CEO Shane Howard congratulated Malinauskas on his election win and was excited about the event’s reinstatement.

“We now look forward to working together to deliver the Adelaide 500 on the streets of Adelaide in December in what will be a spectacular season finale,” he said.

According to Motorsport.com, the running of the event is expected to assume the same structure as in its heyday, with a new South Australian Motorsport Board or equivalent being established to oversee it.

The Adelaide 500 remains the only event to have been inducted into the Supercars Hall of Fame, which took place in 2005.

Meanwhile, the Labor victory also means the reinstatement of the Adelaide Motorsport Festival (AMF), an event which, due to funding cuts, had not run since 2018.

Another one of Malinauskas’s pledges, the popular event, is set to return in November 2022, bringing Formula One cars back to the streets of Adelaide just a week before the Adelaide 500.

The AMF has been called a museum in motion, with its display of historic, rare, and latest go-fast tech vehicles in picnic races setting around a section of the iconic Adelaide F1 Grand Prix track.

Festival Director Tim Possingham was delighted to welcome the event back to SA, noting Adelaide’s unmatched pedigree for motorsport, AutoAction reported.

“AMF was a fast-growing event that had gathered international attention and a strong local following, and we’ll be building on that in the coming years, starting this November,” he said.

“We’ve been overwhelmed by the support we’ve received from the community, and we’re already hard at work to bring them something special.”

The AMF is scheduled to run from Nov.23 to 27 and the Adelaide 500 from Dec.1 to 4.