Long Wait Home
Dozens of Supercars gypsies are camped just beyond the Queensland border as they wait for clearance to return home after the Supercars season.
They are serving their 14-day quarantine inside the ‘border bubble’ so they are not forced into hotel lockdown in the sunshine state to satisfy Covid-19 restrictions.
The Supercars exodus after the Bathurst 1000 saw Victorian teams and drivers finally able to return home after more than 100 days on the road through the shortened 2020 championship season.
They have suffered the most through the year of coronavirus, unable to return home to Melbourne without invoking extra quarantine time to continue on the Supercars circus.
Bathurst winner Shane van Gisbergen was able to avoid the coronavirus restrictions by flying home to New Zealand, while Scott McLaughlin had no trouble with flying straight to the USA for his first IndyCar race.
Now the focus has shifted to the Queenslanders, who are facing their own quarantine time.
Their choice after Bathurst was to return directly to the south-east corner of the state, as most of Supercars crews are based in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, and go into hotel lock-down at a cost of $3000, or wait somewhere covid-free and then go home after a fortnight.
The only exceptions were the team truckies, including Paul Morris who drove home with the cars he fielded in supporting races at Mount Panorama.
“We’re at Lennox Head. If you have to do quarantine, it’s a pretty good spot,” Warren Luff told Race News.
Luff and Chaz Mostert are continuing their Bathurst bromance at the popular surf spot just south of Byron Bay after renting a house they are sharing with several crew members.
“It’s a fantastic spot. We’re going for long walks on the beach. But we’re not holding hands,” Luff joked.
It’s not joke for the teams, which have invaded everywhere from Byron Bay to Kingscliff and taken up temporary residence in the many hotels and rented houses in the holiday hot-spot.
The Red Bull Holden Racing Team is concentrated in the Salt resort, which is less than 20 minutes from the Queensland border.
But team principal Roland Dane took a different approach, travelling to Adelaide – which is considered covid-free – ready for a direct flight home to Brisbane after his 14-day isolation in the real world.
The team bosses of the Shell V-Power squad, Dick Johnson and Ryan Story, both skipped Bathurst for health reasons and to avoid quarantine complications and are now waiting for their team members to emerge from the bubble.
But Ryan Walkinshaw from Walkinshaw Andretti United, has joined the gypsies by travelling to Byron Bay with his partner as part of an end-of-season sunshine break away from Walkinshaw headquarters in Melbourne.
