Historic finals series explained and who ‘aggressive’ Supercars shake-up will benefit most

This will be a Supercars season like no other.

When Will Brown took the chequered flag second on Saturday afternoon in Adelaide last November, he closed a long chapter in Supercars history.

He became the last driver to win the Australian Touring Car Championship off the back of a season-long performance.

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Brown didn’t win the most races last year — he won just five times, and only twice in the last seven months of the season — but his brutal, uninterruptable consistency after a blistering start ensured he claimed the title trophy with a race to spare ahead of teammate Broc Feeney.

That won’t be good enough in 2025.

Thanks to the all-new finals format, there’ll be no substitute for victories this year. In the chase for the title, the winner will take it all.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

The biggest shake-up to the Australian Touring Car Championship in more than half a century, the introduction of a finals series to the Supercars is guaranteed to deliver a final-round title showdown and is sure to generate plenty of intrigue throughout.

The new format fundamentally changes the challenge of winning Australian motorsport’s biggest prize and reconceptualises the entire season.

The campaign is now divided into three segments.

The first is the Sprint Cup, contested over eight rounds comprising 25 races. These events are run to a format similar to those of previous seasons, with every weekend featuring at least three races, including one short opening race followed by two longer feature races.

The Melbourne SuperSprint is the only exception, run to four short races to fit around the packed Australian Grand Prix schedule.

The season then transitions to endurance mode with the return of the Enduro Cup. Tailem Bend opens proceedings with a 500-kilometre race ahead of the season-highlight Bathurst 1000.

What comes next is something completely different.

The three-leg finals campaign will see all but 10 drivers eliminated from championship contention heading into round 11 on the Gold Coast.

The contenders’ points will be reset to 3000. Bonus points will be awarded based on championship position, with the title leader awarded 150 points down to 21 points for the 10th-placed driver, ensuring season-long consistency is acknowledged. The winners of the Sprint Cup and Enduro Cup will receive an extra 25 points each.

Championship standings for the Gold Coast

1. First place: 3150 points

2. Second place: 3120 points

3. Third place: 3096 points

4. Fourth place: 3078 points

5. Fifth place: 3066 points

6. Sixth place: 3057 points

7. Seventh place: 3048 points

8. Eighth place: 3039 points

9. Ninth place: 3030 points

10. Tenth place: 3021 points

Any driver who wins either of the Gold Coast’s two races will automatically progress to the next round. The three lowest ranked drivers are eliminated.

The seven remaining finalists have their tallies reset to 4000 points for Sandown. Bonus points from 150 down to 48 are awarded based on championship position.

Championship standings for Sandown

1. First place: 4150 points

2. Second place: 4120 points

3. Third place: 4096 points

4. Fourth place: 4078 points

5. Fifth place: 4066 points

6. Sixth place: 4057 points

7. Seventh place: 4048 points

The same rules then apply to leave just four drivers in contention for the Adelaide Grand Final.

The now traditional season closer will see fewer bonus points awarded, with 50, 30 and 15 handed out to the top three respectively and none for the last-placed contender.

Championship standings for Sandown

1. First place: 5050 points

2. Second place: 5030 points

3. Third place: 5015 points

4. Fourth place: 5000 points

Now it’s all or nothing. End the weekend with the most points and you’ll be Supercars champion.

WHO WILL IT BENEFIT?

A seismic change like this doesn’t come without winners and losers.

The rhythm of the season has been fundamentally altered, and on the evidence of last season, that will benefit some teams and drivers more than others.

Whereas Brown won the 2024 title with a fast start and then by being a podium fixture — he finished outside the top three just five times all year — his competitive advantage was super slim in the second half of the season once Tickford and Walkinshaw Andretti United found consistency.

Cam Waters in particular enjoyed a strong points surge late in the year — in fact he was the highest scorer between his round victories at the Townsville 500 and the Gold Coast 500, at which point he fell out of title contention owing to that slow start.

Chaz Mostert also picked up a round victory in that period, at the Sydney SuperNight, to almost match Brown’s score rate.

Scores between Townsville 500 and Adelaide 500 (top five title finishers)

1. Cameron Waters: 1506 points

2. Will Brown: 1419 points

4. Chaz Mostert: 1389 points

3. Broc Feeney: 1347 points

5. Thomas Randle: 1074 points

Tickford’s slow start to the season and WAU’s early inconsistency cost Waters and Mostert their title shots, but if the same pattern were to be repeated in 2025, it wouldn’t count against them.

Only finishing inside the top 10 on the title table after the endurance rounds — which both drivers achieved comfortably — will be important to having a crack at the championship.

Of course every team and driver intends to hit the ground running at the start of the season, but early wins are now of limited value to a title fight. More important is developing a deep understanding of the car to ensure it performs at Sandown and on the streets of the Gold Coast and Adelaide in the finals.

Generate momentum and strike form at the right time and you just might prove unstoppable.

WHAT’S THE CHANCE OF AN UPSET?

Big changes don’t come without controversy, and the new Supercars finals format isn’t without its critics.

Some will argue against the break with history by changing so dramatically the way the title is won — though the Australian Touring Car Championship was originally awarded to the winner of just one race prior to 1969.

Others will argue that a championship should reward consistency over peak performance. Those critics might point to NASCAR as evidence of their claim.

The NASCAR Cup Series is a pioneer in the finals space, having moved to a playoffs system in 2004.

The playoffs work in largely the same way as the Supercars finals — the top 16 drivers have their points reset after 26 rounds, and over the following nine rounds the contenders are whittled down to just four drivers for the title-deciding season finale.

In the 21 years since the format’s introduction, only eight times has the driver who would have scored the most points over the entire campaign ended up with the championship.

That means 12 NASCAR Cup Series champions wouldn’t have had enough points to win the title if the year had been run to conventional rules.

Only three times has the driver with the most points before the playoffs — the regular season champion — gone on to win the title.

That trend was true in 2024, when Tyler Reddick won the regular season championship but finished fourth after the playoffs.

Instead Joey Logano, who snuck into the playoffs from 15th in the standings, stormed home to win the title.

Had the campaign been run without a finals system, Kyle Larson would have won the title with the most points. Larson, who finished the regular season second behind Reddick, was eliminated from championship contention before the final round and finished the season sixth.

But NASCAR is a different beast to the Supercars. The combination of the way the sport is set up, the nature of oval racing and the sheer volume of racing means the results are less predictable and borderline chaotic.

The Supercars finals won’t change the fundamental nature of the series, which tends to generate a handful of genuine contenders from two or three frontrunning teams.

Given the 2025 champion is almost certain to come from that pool of drivers, there’s far less risk of a random ‘unworthy’ title result.

In fact Fox Sports simulated the 2024 season using the finals format and found that the drivers who would have gone into the Adelaide Grand Final as the four contenders are the same drivers who finished in the top four of the real championship: Brown, Feeney, Mostert and Waters.

Brown would still have won the championship, having won the Adelaide round overall. The only meaningful difference would have been that Waters would have finished ahead of Mostert in the final standings.

Simulated 2024 championship standings

1. Will Brown: 5338 points

2. Broc Feeney: 5246 points

3. Cameron Waters: 5237 points

4. Chaz Mostert: 5219 points

That’s an example based on only one season, perhaps helped by the fact the eventual champion won the round, the runner-up finished second and the drivers who finished third and fourth ended up almost matching each other on points. Not every season finale is going to end so neatly.

That said, the Adelaide Grand Final round will comprise three races from this year, minimising the chance a single shock result will dramatically sway the title fight.

WHAT ABOUT UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES?

Though focus is largely on how the final race might play out, the effect of the format changes on the rest of the season also deserve consideration.

While drivers will be motivated to finish inside the top 10, based on last year’s form that should be a formality for three or four teams.

What motivation is there to push to the limit in the opening eight rounds of the season?

To begin with, racing for wins or high finishes when possible could be pivotal this season.

The refreshed format isn’t just about building up to the finals. It also comes with more racing and less practice, which will likely lead to less predictable results.

If you don’t capitalise on your good days, you could find yourself taking serious damage on your bad days.

“There’s a lot less practice, which will make it a lot harder on the drivers as well to be really turned up for qualifying,” Mostert said.

“I’m excited for a really aggressive championship this year on and off track.

“More racing, more kilometres of racing, more races, a lot more duels out there — it going to be pretty epic.”

The points system has also been tweaked to give greater relative reward to the drivers who finish first and second, which could encourage greater risk taking among the podium places and compound the pain for those suffering an off weekend.

And while championship position ahead of the finals is of considerably less importance this year — so long as you’re in the top 10 — position on the title table isn’t totally worthless.

First place is worth 150 bonus points for the first weekend of the finals. That’s 30 more than the next-best driver, 54 more than the driver in third and 129 points than whoever sneaks through in 10th.

The difference between first and second in each race in Sandown, the first round of the finals, is just 12 points. The buffer earnt over the regular season could be crucial.

The sport is also working hard to ensure there’s prestige in emerging from the Sprint Cup victorious. A perpetual trophy, modelled on the steering while of Jack Brabham’s 1966 Formula 1 title-winning BT19, will be awarded to the Sprint Cup winner, whose name will be inscribed onto the side of the silverware each season, slowly building a legacy.

“Eight rounds being a Sprint Cup, basically a minor premiership, will be really cool,” Mostert said. “Everyone will still race to try and get top honours coming out of those eight rounds heading into the enduros.

“It’ll be pretty cool to be one of the first guys to have this honour of the Sprint Cup in the Supercars.”

The Enduro Cup has also been made a formal part of the campaign again, with the overall winner of the Bend Enduro and the Bathurst 1000 earning their own accolade.

And with the Sprint Cup and Enduro Cup winners scoring 25 bonus points each for the first round of the finals, both distinct parts of the campaign will weave themselves into the narrative of the season overall.

“I think it’ll be really exciting,” Waters said. “There’s a lot to race for and a lot to race for in all different phases of the year.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun, and everyone will be pushing flat out all the time, which will be cool to see.”

The finals series is one of the biggest shake-ups to the Supercars in its history. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying it’ll spice up the chase for the 2025 championship.