October 16-18 2026 saw the final round of the Carbon Offroad Ultra 4 Australia King/Queen Of Australia final round at Borderlands Event Park near Stanthorpe in QLD Australia.
For Dan Kozaris the owner and founder of Carbon Offroad it was a double celebration. One being the end of the second year of successful engagement as naming rights sponsor for the Ultra 4 Australia Series. With the new owners Dave and Mel seeing 12 entrants at the start of 2025 through to 30 entrants at the end of 2026, it's a massive achievement and testament to the effort and team they have built in the community to bring this awesome sport back to the masses here in Australia.
Secondly as a race participant with the Carbon UTV along with Terry North as navigator to successfully complete the event and finish the 6 hour enduro in 4th place along with a 3rd place podium in UTV class for the full series. This was a stella achievement for both Carbon Offroad and the race team who fought tooth and nail all year to balance building and repairing the buggy alongside business growth in Australia and the USA, and working hard to support the event from the sponsorship side of things.
One of the elements of this whole engagement which is important for people in the community to realise is that from the sponsorship angle, Carbon as a business is not in it just for the ROI. Dan has been engaged with grass roots offroad racing and winch challenge racing for close to 15 years, either racing, sponsoring events or sponsoring race teams, as a founder he is one of the most passionate people around when it comes to supporting the competitive element of the offroading community. Inspiring others to engage through racing, pit and race team support, spectating, marshalling and more, he tries to bring as much attention and help to keep the events growing. Whilst building the team at Carbon he's been careful to ensure close cultural alignment to offroading pursuits, seeing many of the team either racing, engaged as official media for the event, marshalling and event prep and brand support on site.
The beautiful thing about Ultra 4 is that it's one of the most family friendly and engaging offroad racing scenes going round, you can come and compete or spectate knowing that everything is done with the community and supportive atmosphere that fosters a positive experience for people young and old.
The North Family are the epitome of the U4 spirit, long term, multigenerational engagement sees the family involved from the racing, event prep, pit crew duties, camp support and generally just bringing the whole family together and making memories whilst providing the best of fun and experience to help everyone around them. We here at Carbon are extremely grateful to the whole North family for taking our buggy project on and helping us through the process of learning how to be competitive in the racing scene.
They are not an isolated case as well. There are too many people to mention here that deserve the recognition of their support at all levels. Without good people the event is nothing, and with that in mind, you get to the end of an event and you consider what made it fun, engaging, successful, the actual racing, whilst being absolutely amazing almost takes a second place to the mateship and awesome community atmosphere that takes place. In a crazy world, there is nothing better than being out bush with a great bunch of people doing what we love.
The race wrap up for this event was as follows:
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Came into the event with three months solid race prep from Terry North, bulkheads rebuilt "again", new RS9 long drum Carbon Winch with 42m of high strength Spectra rope fitted.
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The first 4 car start short course was brutal from dust, starting second line both times we were really disadvantaged off the line finding a clean line, meaning we were off pace from the start, the first heat Dan forgot to do his helmet strap up, meaning at 30 second stop to fix that left them out of the running heat one. Heat two had the same dust issue
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Into prologue and after actually completing two heats we were now starting to get exicted for putting in a clean lap as a single vehicle on course. We set off at a blistering pace and kept on the gas for the whole lap, with what was looking to be one of the fastest times we came through the last gully and side loaded the wheels a couple times which resulted in the bolts hearing off the steering rack, dead in the water 100m from the finish. This was devastating to be on the back of Jonos wrecker again back into camp. Terry and the guys got to work and had the rack out and investigating what we needed to get back on course for the long course enduro, luckily a couple of left hand drill bits and some new bolts and locktite sorted us out and we were good to go again. The rest of the buggy now feeling great we were keen to get started.
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The long course event came, along with the nerves and mindset work to go into survival mode. starting close to the back of the grid, it was going to be a hard tasks to get into the unofficial podium positions, so we focused on purely driving the UTV within it's limits, making up time and positions as other competitors started breaking down and pulling out. We had some bad luck with tyres, with two flats in a matter of minutes wiping around 20 mins off our time fixing them.
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We drove great lines, not having to winch all day, using the power and wheel travel of the MavR to get us through the waterfall and rock step winch walls very cleanly.
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A little error of judgement on lap 8 meant we thought we had to transition to the lap 9-10 track, once that became clear we were on the wrong lap we rectified by completing the lap 8 track and then back to lap 10 for Carbon canyon.
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Long course enduro events are really a different game, both vehicle and human management are real considerations, we found our shocks starting to fade around lap 8, around the time the rear sway bar deleted itself by shearing straight through, leaving us flopping around the course for the rest of the race, hydration both incoming and outgoing we really need to work on, as well as fuel management, using half a tank for the first 7 laps saw us thinking we would be good for the rest of the race, coming into the second last lap it was evident that we would be pushing our luck to do the last lap without running out of fuel so we stopped in for a half jerrycan to get us through the final lap. On board hydration, sock catheters, fuel stops, are all on the planning list for next event. Getting absolutely bashed around in the buggy with a full bladder ain't fun!
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Carbon Canyon was next level, serious rock crawling territory and right on the money for what Ultra4 racing is all about, going fast through big rocks. I felt pretty special at this time, dropping down into the canyon named after the business, and with a eral WTF moment about what lay ahead it was almost comical as to how ridiculously good this moment was for me, the buggy and for Terry, who had put a stupid amount of work into the buggy to get it here, I owed it more to him than anyone to get the buggy through the final lap, and the canyon in one piece.
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Now rock crawling in the MavR is somewhat weird, its hard to see out the front, and wheel placement is often a bit of a guess, through the pinch point we smashed the airbox, and Brent mentioned we damaged it, not knowing how much deep water was ahead, I was very conscious of not dropping the drivers side too deep into water, for fear of sucking up into the intake.
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the MRT tyres we use are very good on the rock, they hooked up even on the wet slick stuff and got us through it all. I was mostly in shock that we made it through without a winch and without any really bad damage. I felt bloody proud to have our brand name on that canyon. It was a real highlight of the weekend.
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After rolling through the canyon and driving up a literal slick rock waterfall we headed on the final part of the last lap, both Terry and I were pretty quiet. I think we were both bloody nervous of seeing this through to the end, combined with both being deaf from the noise of the motor for the last 5 or so hours. We headed back to the finish line at around 75% pace, not wanting to break anything so close to the end.
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Seeing Mel waving the checkered flag as we roosted it through the finish line was a massive relief and huge achievement. Even a few days afterwards, I'm still processing what was a huge weekend, and huge year for the buggy and the business.
- Ultra 4 in Australia has come a long way very quickly in the last two years. we can't wait to see what 2027 brings as Carbon Offroad continues with it's naming rights sponsorship and the Carbon Buggy preps for a full season of competitive racing.
