Cootamundra’s Caleb Hefren had a day out on Easter Sunday after taking part in the Bathurst 6-hour race. Photo: Brittany Hefren.
Racers from around the globe dream of taking on Mount Panorama and Cootamundra’s Caleb Hefren has made it a reality.
Mr Hefren secured a seat as a support driver with RPM86’s Tony Prior and his speedy Toyota 86 as part of the Bathurst 6-hour event on the Easter long weekend.
“I’ve been running in the Toyota 86 Scholarship Series, which is a support category that runs with Supercars,” Mr Hefren said.
“From there, Tony and his team reached out to me and asked if I wanted to give the Bathurst 6-hour a crack.
“I jumped at it and was able to learn a lot during the race over the Easter weekend.”
Caleb has been a keen motorhead for as long as he can remember. He dreamed of getting behind the wheel as an eager five-year-old.
“Racing for me started when I was seven. My dad and my brother would often race, but it probably started even younger than that when I first watched the Supercars on TV when I was five years old. I remember thinking, ‘How can I get in one of them?’
“I started by racing karts. My team is all self-funded, so when I was 14 I got a job at Maccas and spent almost every cent so I could keep racing.”
Over the next few years, Caleb went on to race in the Southern Stars series, a junior racing division he won, before running in the NSW Series X3, a series that focuses solely on Hyundai X3 Excels, and then landing a position in the Toyota 86 Scholarship Series.
“I got offered a one-off drive this year for the Bathurst 6-hour, which is the second time I’ve ever driven the event, but the first time in D-class [a specific specification and class of car],” he said.
Caleb joined Tony Prior and his team at RPM86 as a support driver. Photo: Armstrong Rider Photography.
“The car had good pace on the Friday leading into the qualifying for the 6-hour, but unfortunately, the qualifying itself wasn’t quite as good.
“We ended up qualifying 10th out of 16 cars in our category. The car wasn’t quite in the window as good as Friday, we’ve made a few setup changes, and it went backwards a little bit.
“We ended up tuning it up a bit more for the race. Our strategy meant we could go an hour and 40 minutes flat chat with Tony taking the first stint. We took a couple of steps backwards to start just trying to find the groove of the car, and during my first stint, which started around the one-and-a-half-hour mark, I was just hit by safety car after safety car, making it impossible to move up.
“Fortunately for Tony and me our second stints were a lot better. Tony got in and was able to chase down some of the other D-Class cars and when I jumped in for the final stint of the race we were able to work with our team car to set the fastest lap of the race and make up a few spots.
“We finished fifth in our category and 31st out of 72 cars across all the different groups.”
Caleb said the result was up there in terms of his best ever days of racing, but admitted his dream was to one day land a seat in the V8 Supercars.
“I haven’t actually gotten a win yet. I’m chasing one and I’ve got a few podiums at other levels, but still chasing that first win,” he said.
“The dream would be to get a seat in Supercars and to be able to race in the V8 Supercars Championship across the country. That will require getting a few sponsors and some funding while working through the new 86 scholarship series.
“We would love to see more sponsors jump on board. I was fortunate enough to partner with Simonds at the start of the season for the scholarship series but to get some more stickers on the car and keep climbing up the ranks.”
Caleb’s next event will be in Queensland from 9 to 11 May as part of the scholarship series.
Follow Caleb and his team’s racing journey on Instagram.
