Last year’s Freedom Four Hour took place the very day after COVID restrictions were lifted in the state.
Despite the uncertainty of the times, a good field of cars took to the grid, and the enduro ran for the full four hours without a safety car, resulting in a tight last lap battle with four cars fighting it out for the podium.
This year’s event has a name change, State Race Four Hour will be a spring event, taking place on September 10 at the Winton Motor Raceway.
The event is aimed at Improved Production Cars but is also open to other state level categories, with organisers hoping for interest from categories such as the Porsche 944’s, BMW E30’s, and Toyota 86’s.
The State Race 4 Hour is open to plenty of types of race cars
The regulations include restricted time on fuelling time stops, dependent upon tank capacities, with allocated drum fuel pumps made available to all competitors.Organisers Ben Schoots and Dean Lillie of Raceworks Promotions spoke to AUTO ACTION about this year’s Winton running, and the future of the event.
“It was well received last year for those who took part, and we’re hoping to build on that and get some more diverse cars on the grid,” said Schoots. “We’re hoping for about 20 cars, but 40 would be better.
“We’ve managed to keep costs low despite inflation, and to make it as achievable as possible for the more budget conscious racer.“We’re all about drivers just running their cars as they would in the state series, and being able to compete.”
Dean Lillie of Ravage Raceworks, the other person behind the event spoke a little about how the idea came about.
“It grew out of talking with a group of Improved Production competitors that we have here at Ravage (Ravage Raceworks), and I’d just done the 12 hour a year or so back, and we all thought it would be unreal to be able to do an endurance in our cars,” Lillie explained.
Refuelling is made easy for the State Race 4 Hour competitors
“There didn’t really exist anything like that, and we all agreed that there should be something of the sort, and that’s how it all eventuated with last year coming about.”
In terms of the event’s future, Lillie also expressed a desire to grow upon the existing notion.
“We want to grow it, and we want to keep it at one event per year, but start doing different tracks. That includes maybe doing one interstate at ‘The Bend’ or something. We’ve been talking about the possibility of that since we hatched the idea.” He confirmed to AUTO ACTION.
