V8 Supercars has spent a record $11 million on marketing for this year’s Championship in a bid to lure more fans to the sport.

This includes the massive ‘Greatest Show on Wheels’ campaign and advertisement which features the international music star P!nk.

“We have often said that we want to be a mainstream sport so we have to start acting like a mainstream sport,” V8 Supercars Australia Chairman Tony Cochrane said.

“A part of that is to increase and grow our fan base. I have been reading crap on the internet that they should have had racing cars against racing cars (in the P!nk ad), but that is not going to get us a new market.

“The market that campaign is unashamedly aimed at is young people 14 to 30 with a female skew (and) you don’t exactly sign P!nk for $30,000.”

V8 Supercars’ newly liveried transporter, which features a larger-than-life image of P!nk waving a chequered flag in front of a purple and pink background, made its debut at the Clipsal 500 Adelaide and the number of women who got their photo taken in front of P!nk’s picture was astounding.

Cochrane said the feedback from the campaign featuring P!nk was “unbelievable” but the campaign’s success would be measured at the end of the year.

“The number of downloads of that ad worldwide is a phenomenal amount – we are talking in the tens of millions,” he said.

“At the end of the year (we will ask ourselves) have we sold the increased amount of tickets that we planned and have we got the increase in TV viewers, not only in Australia but globally?”