Willowbank Raceway has issued the below statement about the commencement of track upgrades and how they will effect the local drag racing event calendar for the remainder of the year.
Statement reads:
“Some upgrade work is about commence on the Willowbank Raceway racing surface. This section of track works being part of the Federal Governments Grant. Willowbank has been given the opportunity to commence the work at short notice due to a spot being made available with the contractors that have been appointed to do the upgrade.
We want to make our racer base and volunteers aware of how difficult it has been for our project managers securing capable contractors to complete these works within the allocated timeline.
There are several factors currently working against everyone such as:
• construction material delays
• current lead times in the civil and construction industries,
• the order in which we have been allocated the federal grant.
To add to all the points above, we have had to take a window of opportunity to secure the contractors to start on track work in order to keep things moving forward.
Therefore, from Saturday 12 November the track will be closed for racing activities. All going well the track will become available again for racing around 10th December 2022. This obviously now impacts the Event Calendar for the rest the 2022 year.
QDRC: For various reasons this series has been significantly affected throughout 2022 (mostly to do with the inclement weather), as an example of the seven scheduled rounds in 2022, only three have been completed. Also given the above we will now lose the 19th November QDRC final. Please note; all of the QDRC competitors that have entered the 19 November event will have the entries refunded.
We are planning to commence the construction rollout for the track and facility upgrades throughout 2023, so it is with these issues at hand and with the best interest of all competitors we are combining the 2022 and 2023 season. With the information we now have at hand, we believe this to be the best and fairest outcome allowing a better opportunity for a full competitive championship.
Street Series Shootout: The Street Series Shootout will now be postponed to Saturday 04 February 2023. We have taken the Christmas and school holidays people may already have planned in December and January into consideration, so we also feel this is the fairest option to move it out to February 2023.
We are currently working on the 2023 calendar and will get information out as soon as it comes to hand. Also, before the Christmas shut down, we will get a project update out to you all highlighting the confirmed information we have on hand at that time.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but we need to take the options put before us from the project managers and the contractors to complete the any of the work packages within allocated time frames.
We would like to thank all our dedicated volunteers, and our Sponsors and Competitors of each of these series, for their continued support and understanding and look forward to seeing you all again in the New Year.”
