What a day. Learnt some things about the car as its the first time i have really driven it is pouring rain. Dont want to write an even bigger essay than usual but the amount of extra grip you can get by the way you set up the suspension, tyre pressures and driving style is biblical. Was so wet normal lines went out the window and just looking for the smoothest, dryest, grippiest bit of tarmac.

Glenneys boys tried to make one good box out of two broken ones. Supposedly all good, got it back in the car but the computer wouldnt re learn the clutch engagement points or something. End result was they only had a crunchy first gear so they were / are out.

Day was going pretty uneventfully trading times with quinny. We actually pulled a bit of time out of him today but he's still 7 minutes ahead so he could be cautious.

Got to the start of rianna and at every start they have a big white board with the road conditions. I.e. Wet, dry or intermediate. This of course was wet.

Then they have a list of the cars off the road. It starts with the car number, the distance into the stage, whether they are off the road and 99% it will have ok aswell. You put it in your pace noted so you know its coming up and off you go.

Also if there is oil or gravel anywhere it will list the distance into the stage.

The last thing it has is if there is the fiv on the course. The fiv is the first intervention vehicle and is usually staffed by paramedics who will go and investigate a crash and try to stabilise anyone and make a call on whether to stop the stage to get an ambulance in or keep the stage going.... So...

We get to rianna... Close was in front of us and white behind. No worries. 31 or 32 km' stage. Never going to catch close and figured we would need to keep an eye out for white for when he ineveitably caught us. On the board there were 4 cars off at 29.4km's. There was a fiv at 29.4km's. There was oil and gravel at 29.4 km's. Its a shit of a left hand corner downhill, off camber, new roadworks, pouring with rain....white catches us about 23 or so k's in and we let him pass. We were getting close to 29km's and there were maybe 20 people on the side of the road slowing everyone down. We get to this corner expecting to see cars everywhere yet there were people running down the road... Figured white had gone off. We stopped but there were so many peole we got waved on to tell the stop control. What had happened was a porsche in the porsche tour (no helmets or cages) had gone off, hit a tree and ended up on his side. Then a 944 porsche had gone off and run into him. Then an escort had gone off literally 5 metres away. You couldnt see any of this from the road. Then white has started felling trees i shit you not 4m off the ground. Couldnt even see the car it was so far off the road. Anyways they are all fine but i dont get that obviously the corner was treacherous otherwise the other kids wouldnt have gone off and he was leading by 2 and a half minutes. Why he was pushing so hard i dont know.

So we were taking is incredibly easy and then you would get to the end of a stage and say wow we did ok through there.

Long and the short of it is that we are now up to 4th in modern and 6th outright.

Forecast for tomorrow looks dry. First and second are inly 16 seconds apart and neiter have won the event before so i doubt they will be leaving anything on the table.

More rumours of gearbox dramas in vandenburgs gtr but lets wait and see. We are in sight of hobart now.

One thing i will say if up until now how much faster the event has been this year. Last year into rinadeena (a 30 odd km run into strahan) our time was 3 seconds off winning the stage. Yesterday we did exactly the same time and whilst we were 5th again we were beaten by 40 seconds. The top guys are just in another league and their commitment is unquestionable.

Brendon

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Losing is worse than death. You have to live with losing....