By alley - Feb 9, 2016, 5:24 PM ET

V8 SUPERCAR: Series eyes more international expansion

Although the V8 Supercar Championship's foray to the United States proved a bridge too far, the series is still intent on expanding further beyond Australia and New Zealand. The

V8 series will race this year in Malaysia

, while an additional race in Asia as well as the Middle East and even Russia are under consideration for future years.

“At the moment we’re a little bit spoiled for choice for the 2017 calendar for all the things we have on the radar,” series CEO James Warburton told Australia's

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. “I’d say we’ve got at least another two international races which we should confirm in the first half of this year.

“We’re talking to all parts of the world,” he added. “We’ve had approaches from Russia and all sorts of different countries. As I’ve said many times, we’re an Australian series that races internationally. We don’t regard New Zealand as an international race under the FIA part of the calendar. We regard it as a domestic race, though clearly it’s an international race.”

V8 Supercars competed at Austin's Circuit of The Americas in 2013 but terminated its contract after one race meeting when it was unable to conclude a deal to "twin" the race with another series.