Since 2010, the Australian Superbike Championship has been travelling to Australia’s Top End for the much-anticipated Hidden Valley round of the series.

The track rates as a favourite amongst many riders, and, on a larger scale, the event experience and atmosphere is second to none on the calendar.

For 2013, International Entertainment Group forged forward with a new concept that involved the ASBK the Australian Supercross Championship running at the same circuit. 

We glean the opinion of a number of members of the ASBK paddock to see how they thought the event ran with the addition of Supercross.

ASBK paddock members generally agreed that adding the Supercross discipline to the Hidden Valley event was a positive move. Image: Keith Muir.

Phil Tainton – Team Suzuki team manager:
I think the concept is good. We need to deliver as much entertainment as we can to the paying public, so I haven’t got a problem with that, it’s basically a good idea, although I think it could have been done better somehow, I don’t think it had the attraction that I thought it might, and probably IEG had hoped it would have.

I think back to the Triple Challenge days and recall over a 20 year period of road racing as being the best in terms of crowd attraction whereby we had road racing, and then V8 Supercars, and then drags of a night. I know it’s hard but if somehow Supercross could start at twilight, with lighting, it would be a much better spectacle so you’d sort of drag a bit of a crowd that wanted to see Supercross in for the afternoon to see the road racing, and then keep the road racing crowd there for the Supercross.

If those things could be put in place then definitely it could be a much better spectacle.

Jamie Stauffer – Team Honda rider:
It’s hard to say, but I think it went well. I went over and watched a bit of it. I don’t know what the crowd was like for the whole weekend but I was surprised there wasn’t more of a crowd for Supercross, on Saturday anyway, but I think it’s a pretty good thing.

It gets two different disciplines together, if nothing else, and people have more of a variety to watch. You might get some road race fans watching the Supercross, and vice versa, so I think it works out pretty well.

Phil Harlum – ASBK commentator:
The only thing was, and I heard this from people living in the area, was that most of the pre-promotion was about the Supercross. When we saw it on the television, one night they’d have Superbikes, and the next night they’d have Supercross as the main feature. What I actually saw didn’t really seem to favour one or the other in terms of equal coverage.

I hosted the Suzuki meet and greet on the Thursday night at NT Motorcycles, and they had the Supercross guys there as well, which was good to get that crossover. I think the event went well and from a person that’s not really into Supercross, and more into the road racing, it was good to see when the road racing finished there were some people leaving the track, but then there was also still a lot of the crowd there afterwards, which would indicate there was people there to see both.

What I hope is that people that were into road racing went there and saw Supercross which was something a bit different, and appreciated that, and people that would normally watch Supercross had turned up a bit early and watched the road racing. Hopefully they enjoyed that as well.

Jamie Stauffer felt the event attracted a good crossover of fans between the two disciplines. Image: Keith Muir.

As far as the events running together, there wasn’t really anything running concurrently so you could actually watch both in their prime, and not have to have to choose.

You have to recognise the efforts of the NT Major Events who got behind both aspects of it. It was everywhere up there, you literally couldn’t miss it. The promotional elements seemed to focus on a number of riders and not just one, which was good too.

Yarrive Konsky – International Entertainment Group managing director
Darwin was an epic, ambitious dream that the Northern Territory Government believed in. We broke a lot OF barriers and can improve on the foundation we have laid for 2013. I wanted Australia to have its very own Speed Week and by all accounts we succeeded.

As long as we make tomorrow better then we are constantly building the profile of motorcycle sport in Australia. We are the first events management company in motorcycle sport in Australia to exceed 30,000 likes on Facebook, we are constantly on the front foot of improvement and change and we are proud to increase the profile of dirt bikes in Australia. We had over 7000 viewers watching our online race footage.

The weekend past we invested over $100,000 on TV between Supercross and Superbikes and we are equally proud of that as this is only our second season as Supercross promoters of the Australian Championship. The success of the event has led to early discussions on next year’s Darwin event which will most probably see various changes to improve its viewership and desirability.

Matt Walters – Rover Coaches/Kawasaki Connection Prostock rider:
It went pretty good, drew a good crowd from what I could tell. It’s the first time it’s been done in Darwin, and the first time ever, away from the MotoGP, so I wouldn’t be able to say how well it’d go in the other areas or tracks, like Phillip Island or those, without the MotoGP.

But it was good, good for us and everyone that was there as it added to the show. I didn’t get a chance to get over there as we were pretty busy with what we were doing but from what I hear it was good and it can only be a good thing having more people come along to the event as it’s been the Superbikes only for a few years now.

It would have been nice to have the separation and have the Supercross on after the events in the night time, so the spectators could come along and not be in the heat of the day. Other than that, it was run okay, for my view.