BY JESSICA ROUSE
It’s not the first place you’d find the Newcastle Knights, but this morning they took a walk around the Newcastle 500 Supercars track.
Knights players Jamie Buhrer and Nathan Ross were joined by V8 Supercar greats Scott McLaughlin, Jason Bright and Novocastrian driver Aaren Russell to take a walk around the track and offer advice on what the drivers should do while they’re staying in Newcastle.
There’s just 10 days to go until the inaugural Newcastle 500 and the drivers arrived today to find the track nearing its completion.
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Supercar Drivers and Newcastle Knights walk the track. |
“It’s crazy, I’ve now walked it three times properly and each time it just progresses so much, it’s quite crazy to think how much they can do in a couple of weeks so I know all of these other guys saw it back in July and there was nothing here and now there’s this massive amount of infrastructure that the town has built,” said Novocastrian driver Aaren Russell.
“It’s going to be a crazy racetrack but I’m looking forward to it.”
The drivers all agree the track has a little bit of everything when it comes to scenery.
“There’s not many places you can go and you get kind of like a San Francisco feeling through Watt Street and then also have the harbour and the beach as well so I think these guys and myself as well, we’re just keen to get here and the scene is set , you’ve got two guys who are fighting for the championship and its going to come down to this race at Newcastle,” said Aaren.
Supercars driver Jason Bright says they expect 50 per cent of the crowd to be first time supercar event attendees and they hope they develop a love for the sport from what will be a great race.
“That’s the beauty of street races like this. We basically bring the racing to the people, when we’re having races out in the country or at a permanent circuit you rely on the pure motorsport fan to come and watch our races whereas at events like this we come into the city and it’s a big event for the city,” said Jason Bright.