The five are Jack Le Brocq, Shae Davies, Todd Hazelwood, Macauley Jones and James Golding.

Le Brocq, Hazelwood, Davies and Jones are front runners in this year’s Dunlop Super2 Series, the effective ‘division two’ series to the main Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. Golding raced in that series last year and was an endurance race co-driver for Garry Rogers Motorsport in 2016 – and will be again this year.

For Davies, it marks a return to the ‘main game’ championship, the Queenslander having replaced Aaren Russell at Erebus Motorsport for the second half of last season’s championship.

Davies will race at Winton while Dunlop Super2 team-mate le Brocq will drive at Hidden Valley, with both Nissan drivers running at the Queensland Raceway round.

For Le Brocq, the wildcard deal is an ideal opportunity to get experience racing against the regular Supercars Championship drivers in preparation for the endurances races, where he’ll team up with Todd Kelly in the carsales Racing Nissan.

“Once it became clear that there wasn’t the right opportunity to progress to the ‘main game’ this year,” le Brocq said, “our focus swung to putting together as complete a program as possible for 2017 and these ‘Wildcard’ races were always a key component of that.”

Under the new rules for 2017, eligible Dunlop Super2 Series competitors are able to enter up to two of four selected SuperSprint events: the Barbagallo, Hidden Valley, Winton and Queensland Raceway rounds.

The wildcards will also be allocated a test day ahead of each event, allowing them the chance to experience the new Dunlop Super Maxx control tyre the Supercars Championship uses.