Targa bites again... Started the day 40 seconds from the lead. Ended up 2m45 secs in the lead. We had cut the monaro's lead down to 15 seconds going into the last stage and felt confident of taking more time out of him. Anyways he destroyed his transfer case. Finished the stage dropping 2 minutes but has withdrawn.

Still over 200km's to go so a long way from a fate accompli but things are looking positive.

We had a big vibration at 150+ which was pissing me off so we put a couple of new tyres on after lunch and had more of a go through the last three stages. Seemed to fix most of the vibration too.

We are nowhere as far up the overall standings like last time (we finished 5th) but there are no prizes / recognition for outright so there seems little point to keep pushing any harder than we need to.

Craig dean got all crossed up in his new supercharged mustang over a crest and ended up in a farmers paddock with a fair bit of damage. Was no spectators that i am aware of so weird place for that sort of car to go off.

Selley's e30 m3 hartge thing broke down. How its legal i have no idea but whatever.

So goal for tomorrow is consolidate and stay on the road.

Brendon

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

Today was a bit bluh. My favourite targa stage is this 36 ish km run into strahan. Its always late arvo, the sun is in your eyes, its seriously bumpy and starts off long flowing and then gets really tight. Always done well. Anyways they added some new stages in the morning and it was going to be too dark to run it. So they reversed it and made it the first stage this morning. We were chugging along with not a lot to gain and then i saw the tail lights of one of the subarus. Time to go. He must of seen me because he took off and i didnt catch him. However it made me focus and we still pulled a heap of time out of him. We looked at the results and we had pulled 50 seconds out of the guy coming second. Clearly he was taking it easy to. After that we slowed right down.

Queenstown is one of the most famous stages . 99 bends in 6km. A huge percentage are hairpins. I always find it difficult to place the car because it has a massive blind spot on the a pillars. Picked up a few seconds.

Arrowsmith has been shortened a few k's to 51km's. For the first time ever it was dry. If you are super keen you can clean the stage but we just took it super easy.

Few more stages but end result is we are about 3:50 ahead of second with less than 60 km in 6 stages around hobart tomorrow.

Yt started arrowsmith with a smokey viper and close caught him 3 km in. White stuck with him for 17 km until the rods decided to exit stage right. Huge amount of oil down the side of the car.



This is the mustang. I saw some in car and it went oh so close to tipping over.



Tomorrow is six short stages then a mighty piss up in town. Then the proper presentation dinner.

Brendon

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

Top result Brendon....really well done. And good to see that Bruce and Matthews made the finish too.

__________________
No Subarus currently owned

So... we did it. the thing held today with hopes, cables ties and dreams but we got across the line.

Massive carnage on the last day which i find astounding but i reckon a lot of it is fatigue related. Different hotels most nights, lots of concentration, a lot of people backing off because there nothing to gain etc. The roads were damp. A tiny bit of rain but enough to make some places super greasy.

We ended up winning by just over 5 minutes. The guy that was second is super consistent and does a lot of driving so is probably a reasonable benchmark.

On the first day we had the blown intercooler hose so cant compare times.
Second day we were absolute line ball with him
Third day we were about a second per kilometre faster
Fourth day we were about 1.5 secs per k faster.
Fifth day we were about the same and by the last day he had nothing to gain and we both back right off.

The weirdest thing of the event for me was the amount of porsche tour people that fell off the road. the Porsche tour is designed for people with their road car to go and enjoy the roads. there was everything from cayenne's to 944's to 993 rsr's, gt3's etc. The deal is no cages, no times, no helmets and you follow the tour leader who in this case was Steve Johnson in a Cayenne. The theory is a 'spirited drive' in convoy on some amazing roads and then social engagements every night. Its a cool setup if you dont want to compete.

There were porsche tour cars everywhere that fell off. Here is a local GT4 Cayman.



Here is a renault and a sti that had a crash on the last day. there was also a 996 Turbo in the gulf colours that had a proper rollover but i didnt grab any photos of that one.

The driver of the sti has some broken ribs.... but he has a rally rego R8 V10 sitting in the shed that he is in the process of building anyways.....



I have paid my $400 for the photos but i have not seen many come through yet. I will no doubt get the usb in the next couple of weeks.





Brendon

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

Sweet result. Gotta be wrapped with that.

Got any in-car footage?

__________________
Doing it for all the wagons out there

I haven't. I paid for a really good system but it has been the most unreliable piece of junk. It has been back to the states 3 times and they have 'fixed' it even though it is way out of warranty but it never works. Its something i need to sort. However our incar is boring. The car is so stable and predictable that there are no big slides, no big moments etc. It looks really really slow. The only good thing is to see just how good the roads are.

I spoke to the photographer and supposedly the usd stick is being posted tonight.

Brendon

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

Awesome work, congrats!

__________________
[I]trolololol[/I]

Well done mate great write up to...

Well done! Your co driver was my neighbour in Perth. Nice guy! Was super jelly when he told me he drove with you!!!

Also that Cayman had my brackets. I made them for free for him. He smashed my sticker up good on the front left corner! Poor guy

__________________
Huge range of extinguisher brackets for cars!

http://kap.industries/

Once again it has been fantastic to follow your updates. Thanks for sharing and congratulations on the result!

__________________
MY08 WRX 325hp/456nm/18psi E85