Green light for first Townsville Supercars event

The July 9-11 Townsville 500 has been subject to significant doubt all week after Townsville and south east Queensland were plunged into lockdown.

However with Townsville's lockdown now set to end at 6pm this evening, Supercars teams are preparing to head north as planned.

For the Melbourne teams the four-day trek to Townsville by road is set to begin over this weekend.

The event going ahead comes despite a number of ongoing question marks over both lockdown and border conditions.

Brisbane is still in lockdown for at least another 24 hours, which affects Triple Eight, the sole team based in the Queensland capital.

Townsville is also still on Victoria's red zone list, which means that, as it stands, the Melbourne teams will need to quarantine for 14 days when they return home.

However with the lockdown over, it's likely that Townsville will be moved to the orange list – which only requires isolation until a negative test is returned – in the coming days.

Those border concerns are highly likely to be further eased by a double-header at the Reid Park circuit over the next two weekends.

As first flagged by Motorsport.com, Townsville is likely to play host to Supercars on both the scheduled date and the following weekend of July 17-18.

That, however, is yet to be formally confirmed.

The double-header plan reflects an urgency from Supercars to ensure it gets rounds done amid a troubling trend of lockdowns in Australia due to the Delta strain.

Twelve rounds are critical to the category's broadcast deal with Fox Sports and the Seven Network.