Well what a day! Bearing in mind we were 7 minutes behind quinn and 4 minutes in front of purdey we had it all to lose and nothing to gain today.

The first stage was 30km's. Then about 10km's up queenstown and then 60km's through arrowsmith. Then taraleah which is about 10km's. Then lunch then two more short stage of about 8km's ea.

The way targa works over here is they have base times for each stage and then you get a penalty for every second you go over that. I.e the base time for arrowsmith is 24 minutes or so but given it was wet the fastest time was 26.25. So effectively thet got a 2:25 penalty.... Hypothetically someone could go balls out and do the stage in (for the sake of the argument) do it in 18 minutes. They get absolutely no advantage over the bloke that takes a whole lot less risks and does it in 23:59. Its a good system because on the first day they have the first two stages where the base time is very high. I.e you need to average about 60kph. Mthat means people can take it very easy and make sure the cars are good and they are tuned into the navigator etc.

Basically once we got through arrowsmith all but the last stage was easily cleared. I.e there was nothing to gain by going balls out.....

So we get to lunch and vandenbergs gtr is bellowing white smoke and has zero oil in it. We were sitting in fourth and given it had two stages and over 100km's of liasion i was quietly confident that it wouldnt make it to hobart....

So we go to the next stage (ellendale) which is easily cleared. I.e whoever makes it to lunch in front really only has to make it to hobart and they will win... Someone forgot to tell close that the stage was easily cleared. I havent seen the in car yet but effectively what happened was Close caught kennard with two corners to go. To catch kennard in the dry in 9km's is a prety massive effort. Anyways he went to pass him on the outside and ended up going off. And rolling 8 times into a ravine. Car is totalled. My gut feel is that given vandenburgs problems and that close was 17 secs behind going into lunch close thought he needed to go hard to catch vandenburg. His (relatively) inexperienced nav simply didnt tell close he had nothing to gain by going flat out. End result was he was out and we were up to 3rd. And vandenburgs bunky was still bellowing smoke. We thought we were on for 2nd....

Vandenburgs gtr is fucked. End of story. Two broken rods and a stuffed turbo. So they kept stopping and pouring oil in. Once they run out of oil they were pouring gearbox oil in. The deal is it had to make it to hobart under its own steam. You are not allowed to tow it... So they got their service van and pushed it all the way to hobart. It was 33km's from the last stage to the finish.. They poured 17 litres of oil in it..... The front of the van is stuffed. The back of the gtr is stuffed....

So end result is vandenburg wins, quinn was second and we were 3rd. Given we were 85th after stage 3 on wednesday to say we are stoked is an epic understatement.

Its the first time i have ever gotten to spray champagne and by christ does it feel good. The amount of time, blood sweat, tears and money that has gone into building and maintaining the car has been epic.

Brendon

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