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V8 Supercars at Barbagallo Raceway for the BigPond 300 last year.

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V8 Supercars Australia Chairman, Tony Cochrane, said Barbagallo Raceway’s pitlane needs to be fixed before the V8 Supercars will return to Western Australia.

The category has copped a lot of backlash from punters angry that V8 Supercars has withdrawn from the 2010 event in Perth.

Cochrane accused the Western Australian Sporting Car Club (WASCC) of spreading miss-information on why the V8s would not head west this year, but refused to enter a slinging match.

Instead, he explained that he was not willing to face a manslaughter charge if a crew member was killed in the narrow pitlane.

“It’s fine if you are not trying to refuel or change tyres under time constraints with the number of people we have got in it and that pit does not get used for refueling when we’re not there,” Cochrane said.

“What the Western Australian Sporting Car Club keep coming back to us saying is ‘you have been coming here for 30 years, what’s changed?’

“Well I’m sorry, we have changed as a sport enormously. We used to go there for years and do three 20-minute races.

“We don’t do three 20-minute races anywhere anymore and I’d suggest our fans would go nuts if we turned up anywhere and did three 20-minute sprint races.”

Cochrane said Will Davison’s accident at pitlane entry and the resulting pitlane chaos at last year’s Perth event highlighted the issues.

“So do you wait for the next thing that goes wrong in the pits where somebody loses a leg or somebody loses an arm or somebody gets severely burnt?” he questioned.

“What’s the trigger by what we go ‘we’d better do something about this’?”

Cochrane noted that an employer faces manslaughter charges when an employee gets killed if a recognised Occupational Health and Safety issue has been ignored.

“Are you going to step into my shoes and take that risk? I’m not,” he said.

“Everyone says it’s a Tony Cochrane thing not wanting to go to Perth, but the (V8 Supercars Australia) Board voted 8-0 not to go back to Perth in a unanimous vote.”

Cochrane turned the tables on the WASCC and the WA Government, challenging them to provide V8 Supercars Australia with a letter indemnifying the category if someone was injured in Barbagallo Raceway’s pitlane.

“And what did they both say? ‘Oh, we can’t do that’,” he said.

Cochrane finds it ironic that while Perth is the most resource rich state in Australia, it has the most antiquated track and facilities.

“Tasmania is in front of it now no question; with their recent improvements they are miles ahead,” he said.

“So we’ve been saying for a long time, Perth you have got to lift your game.

“We long ago gave up on the concept of doing a street race, that street race has now been lost forever; it’s gone to Sydney.”

Cochrane said if the Government has chosen Barbagallo as the track for V8 Supercars, then the parties should work on getting it up to scratch for V8 racing because the category wants to return to WA.

He cited incentives offered to the WASCC, including the use of track engineers at cost, track designing services from Mark Skaife, a long-term deal which was also a back loaded deal so that improvements could be made quickly, to outline how serious V8 Supercars was about returning to Perth beyond 2010.

“We put a whole raft of things on the table because we want to race in Perth,” he said.

“That’s what gets lost in this. We, V8 Supercars Australia, want to race in Perth, but it has to be befitting of where the modern Championship is at.”