The 2021 S5000 Australian Drivers' Championship, known by its sponsored identity the VHT S5000 Australian Drivers' Championship, was the inaugural season of the Australian S5000 Championship, run after a series of exhibition races in 2019. The series was sanctioned by

Motorsport Australia Motorsport Australia, formerly the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport (CAMS), is the nationally recognised governing and sanctioning body for four-wheeled motorsport Motorsport or motor sport are sporting events, competitions and relate ...

(MA) and promoted by the Australian Racing Group as part of the 2020 and 2021 Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Series. The season was held over 4 rounds, it began in January at

Symmons Plains Raceway Symmons Plains Raceway is a motor racing circuit in Australia, located about south of Launceston, Tasmania. Since the closure of the Longford Circuit in the 1960s it has been Tasmania's premier motor racing facility. The circuit is one of th ...

and ended in May at

Sydney Motorsport Park Sydney Motorsport Park (known until May 2012 as Eastern Creek International Raceway) is a motorsport circuit located on Brabham Drive, Eastern Creek (40-kilometres west of the Sydney CBD), New South Wales, Australia, adjacent to the Western ...

Joey Mawson Joseph Terry Mawson (born 27 March 1996 in Sydney) is an Australian racing driver of Peruvian descent. He is the current double champion of the Australian S5000 Championship. Career Mawson started his career in karting Kart racing or kart ...

won the

Australian Drivers' Championship The Australian Drivers' Championship is a motor racing championship contested annually since 1957 by drivers of cars complying with Australia's premier open-wheeler racing category. This category was determined by the Confederation of Australia ...

(MA Gold Star) title.

Teams and drivers

The following teams and drivers were under contract to compete in the 2021 championship: The following drivers only competed in practice and/or qualifying for the abandoned March 2020 round at Melbourne:

Race calendar

The original 2020 calendar proposal was released on 29 October 2019, with six confirmed rounds, plus one non-championship round at the "Bathurst International", all held in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. Qualifying was held during the opening round at Melbourne, but the event was abandoned on March 13, 2020, as the headlining

Australian Grand Prix The Australian Grand Prix is an annual Formula One motor racing event, taking place in Melbourne, Victoria. The event is contracted to be held at least until 2035. One of the oldest surviving motorsport competitions held in Australia, the Gran ...

had been cancelled by

Formula 1 Formula One (F1) is the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel single-seater formula Auto racing, racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The FIA Formula One World Championship has been one ...

because of

McLaren McLaren Racing Limited ( ) is a British auto racing, motor racing team based at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, Surrey, England. The team is a subsidiary of the McLaren Group, which owns a majority of the team. McLaren is best known a ...

's withdrawal after a team member was tested positive for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

. With multiple disruptions delaying the season start due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, heavy border restrictions in Australia further complicating the holding of the championship, and various calendar revisions that did not went ahead as scheduled, the season started in January 2021, with a four-round calendar where one venue was still to be announced. It included a round at Symmons Plains, which was not featured in the calendar until the May 2020 revision. Rounds at Winton and The Bend were not rescheduled, while the rounds at Melbourne and Bathurst were set apart from the calendar due to their later dates as support events for the Australian Grand Prix and the inaugural Bathurst International, being later featured as part of the end-of-year S5000 Tasman Series. The round at Phillip Island was later postponed and rescheduled. On 16 February 2021 it was announced the third round would be held at Sandown. As had been planned for 2020, the winner of each feature race received a trophy named in honour of former Australian racing drivers. The following racetracks were included at some point on the 2020 calendar, but were not rescheduled for the 2021 Australian Drivers' Championship.

S5000 Tasman Series

''See: 2021 S5000 Tasman Series'' The follow-up season, initially billed as the 2021–2022 S5000 Australian Drivers Championship, was planned to feature the inaugural holding of the S5000 International Triple Crown, a stand-alone series-within-the-series consisting of the three events held in Melbourne, Bathurst and Gold Coast, supporting the

, the Bathurst International and the Gold Coast 500 respectively. After the cancellation of the 2021 Australian Grand Prix, it was decided to instead revive the

Tasman Series The Tasman Series (formally the Tasman Championship for Drivers)Tasman Championship for Drivers, CAMS Manual of Motor Sport with National Competition Rules 1974, pages 80 to 83 was a motor racing competition held annually from 1964 to 1975 ove ...

with the remaining 2021 rounds, separate from the S5000 Australian Drivers Championship that will be held in 2022.

Race results

Drivers' standings

At each meeting, a qualifying session, two qualifying heats and a Main Event were held. Meeting points were awarded to the fastest ten qualifiers in qualifying, where the grid for the first heat was set. For the second heat, the top 75% from qualifying were reversed. The grid for the Main Event was defined by the points earned by the drivers across the weekend.

Notes

References

External links

*
2020 S5000 Australia Series Sporting and Technical Regulations, motorsport.org.au, as archived at web.archive.org on 6 June 2020
{{Australian Drivers' Championship S5000 Championship S5000 Australian Australian S5000 Australian Drivers' Championship