The top 500 kilometer endurance race forgotten

WHEN the great ‘500’s of Australian touring car and supercar racing are discussed, they generally relate to Sandown, ‘Clipsal’ (Adelaide!), Phillip Island (albeit a short history) and Queensland Raceway (also a brief history!).

However, one of the overlooked and forgotten ‘500s’ to include touring cars was the Wakefield Park 500, held 20 years ago in 2004, on December 19 to be exact.

The race combined cars with history in V8 Supercars, Super Touring and Future Tourers, along with the Porsche Carrera Cup and Nations Cup, to create a literal ‘all in’ sedan enduro.

Officially known as the ReHydr8 Christmas 500, the 228-lap race featured a field of 16 starters, 13 of them classified as finishers.

And not a single Safety Car period!

The race ended up being won by father and son duo Tony and Klark Quinn in one of their VIP Petfoods Porsche 996 GT3 Cup cars that had run in the Carrera Cup.

They came home four laps ahead of the BMW 320i Super Tourer of Luke Searle and Trevor Sheumack with a further 10 laps back in the former Dick Johnson Gulf Western Oil Falcon EL V8 Supercar driven by Peter Vicary, Terry Wyhoon (who qualified on the front row of grid) and Ray Ayton.

The Gulf Western Falcon was the last of the E-Series Falcons built by DJR and driven by Dick Johnson in 1998 and privateer Cameron McLean with support from Greenfield Mowers in 1999.

“I was banned for an alleged jump start where I had to take an early stop-go penalty which dropped me back to third while I was in the lead, however after a few laps I was back in lead, but other than that, the weekend was uneventful,” said Wyhoon after the race.

“Racing around Wakefield Park is a lot of fun and it’s a lot of hard work to get there quickly.”

Geoff Parker’s VY Commodore Future Tourer was two laps further back in fourth, with Adam Proctor’s Ford Mondeo Super Tourer in fifth with 207 laps on the clock.

Another Future Tourer, the V8-powered Mitsubishi Magna driven by Neil Byers and Andy Cantrell lasted 150 laps before being sidelined by transmission problems.

The pole-sitting Ferrari 360 Challenge of the late Dane Allan Simonsen and Ted Huglin was the first to retire with 79 laps completed before being withdrawn due to engine and transmission problems.

The most popular car in the field was the Mitsubishi Mirage, the little pocket rockets that formerly formed a single-make series found plenty of use later in life in stock car racing and five of them ran in the ” 500”.

Apart from the fact that the race had a wide variety of cars, it was the fact that there were no mandatory pit stops for refueling or tyres, the competitors just did what they had to do to complete the race – how refreshing!

You can read the full report on this race in Motorsport News Issue 299, including the 2004 V8 Supercar season review, interviews with Marcos Ambrose, Will Davison, Ralf Schumacher and Chris Atkinson – and much more!

Check it out here in the Motorsport News archive, where we’ve digitized every issue of the magazine and made it available to fans around the world.

GET ACCESS HERE: Motorsport News Issue 299: