Adderton outlines 2023 Supercars entry plan

The Boost Mobile founder is lobbying Supercars to get hold of the dormant 26th Teams Racing Charter that would allow an additional car on the grid.

Should he be successful he plans to run a full-time entry that will be raced by Stanaway, while he wants Murphy as team principal.

Stanaway and Murphy teamed up in a Boost Mobile-backed, Erebus-run wildcard entry at the Bathurst 1000 earlier this month.

Adderton says he has an international co-driver lined up to partner Stanaway at next year's Bathurst 1000 now that Murphy has officially hung up his helmet.

A full-time Boost Mobile entry for 2023 would likely be facilitated by a technical partner, although Adderton is tight-lipped on which team he would work with.

This isn't the first time Adderton has tried to start his own team, having failed to buy what were then known as Racing Entitlements Contracts back in 2019.

Thanks to the change in ownership last year the entry process has now changed, with RECs replaced by TRCs.

Supercars still holds one TRC and now has ultimate power to hand it over without series-wide approval.

However rival teams would still be involved in the process given it would be discussed at Commission level, even if the outcome would technically only be a recommendation.

As part of this latest bid to land his own entry, Adderton has vowed to race without taking the guaranteed income from the TRC for two years.

The push for a standalone Boost Mobile entry follows a promise to pull all Boost backing from Supercars at the end of this year, after a photo of Supercars chairman Barclay Nettlefold at a Walkinshaw Andretti United Optus appearance surfaced online.

That was despite Boost being the official telco of Supercars.

According to Adderton he will backtrack on the threat to pull out of Supercars if the category comes to the party and hands him the 26th TRC.

An online petition calling on Supercars to sell a TRC to Adderton has already garnered over 3000 signatures.

"I made it clear to Supercars that we were not happy and if they are going to treat us like that, then we may as well go spend our money somewhere else," Adderton told the Castrol Motorsport News podcast.

"Now in hindsight since then, Supercars has reached out and we have had dialogue and have been discussing things with them.

"I don’t think they want to see us leave but now it’s down to, I need to have our own team, we want our own [TRC].

"I think the fans want it. It frustrates me that you have got 25 cars on the grid and probably 10 are real and the rest are basically just rental cars.

"I think they need to have more teams and more teams like Boost and we want in.

"So yeah, if we can make it work and it works for us as a brand and it works for us as a team, I want to do it.

"We’ll put Richie in the car, I’ve told them. I’ll put a letter in to them requesting that we get a [TRC], whether it’s leased or bought.

"I’ve got a really cool person that I’m talking to internationally about doing a co-drive for Bathurst which I think would raise the sport up."

While the TRC incomes are no longer tied to the amount of entries, Adderton is still adamant that finances are at the heart of the perceived reluctance to let him into the series.

That's why he's vowed to raced without income for two years, the major benefit of which would actually be felt by Supercars, which wouldn't have to fork out the additional TRC payment.

"A lot of the teams are like, ‘we don’t want to sell him one because then our money gets [diluted]’ – ‘I don’t want your $650,000 or whatever the money is," said Adderton.

“I won’t take revenue for two years. They can lease it to me.

"I honestly think that the teams are afraid. I think the teams actually like the rental model. I think most of the teams don’t want to race us.

"I said to someone the other day, I’m obviously very opinionated – if you want to shut me up, give me a race team and then beat me on the track.

"They don’t want to beat us on the track. They know what we’re capable of and they know that when we get in there, we’re going to give it everything to race. I don’t think they want the competition.

"If they do want the competition, then let us in and let's settle it on the track. I’d be more than happy to settle on the track with the teams.

"We just want to go out there and we want to race and we’re either good enough or we’re not good enough. To me, if they are afraid of competition then they should get out of the sport."

As for the facilitation of the entry Adderton said: “I think initially we would probably do a technical partnership but it would be standalone – it would be ours, we buy the car, we do all of that and then we basically set it up over time.

"We know exactly how it is going to work. We’re ready. It’s just a matter now of getting Supercars and the teams to say ‘okay, Adderton can come racing’. And if they can’t let me come racing, then they better tell us why."