|
Home |
|
|
News Headlines |
|
|
Wallpapers |
|
|
|
|
We were determined that the second day would be a confidence building day - we would take things easy, keep the car on the road, and try to reclaim the concept of what we had been telling everyone we were there for - FUN! Mike Constantine appeared on the startline to wish us well. He mentioned that he had finished working on the other car at 5am that morning. It was only about 7:30 am now, and he was already back on his feet.
The first targa was a short easy one through some suburban streets of Launceston, and once again hundreds of schoolchildren and other locals were out to cheer us on (actually, the schoolkids just wanted us to do burnouts). We did the stage calmly and easily, and both noticed that the more calmly we did it, the more easily we did it. We came to the conclusion that if we could stay on the road, we could do quite well.
The second stage, the Sidling, was downgraded due to a Mini Cooper self destructing on a rock wall, and we toured on to Derby. Somehow we had moved back in the queue to the point where we were surrounded by the New Release and Contemporary cars, such as Porsche Carrera 4s and Laser Turbos. As we left the start line, Kevin Bartlett waited to start 30 seconds behind us in Kerry Packer's Nissan GTR. Not surprisingly, he caught us halfway through the stage, and we realised one of the pleasures of actually driving in such a race - competing against the motor sport legends.
Maintaining our consistent and smooth approach, we took every targa of the day but one. The day brought the first sightings of unmarked pit crew vans strategically positioned on the side of the road near the ends of Targa stages, brimming with high octane fuel churns, mechanics in matching overalls with toolkits as big as my car, and in some cases, we could have sworn we saw spare racing tyres in the vans. It must have been an hallucination brought on by the wafting av gas fumes, since tyre swapping was strictly forbidden by the rules. Some of the drivers were definitely taking the race seriously, of that there was no doubt.
Comic highlight of the day was during our 12 minute cray fish munching lunch break, seeing Dick Johnson standing around signing autographs for young children while a team of at least 4 mechanics rebuilt the rear suspension on his Laser. That's the way to do this race. Save of the day was us missing a BMW Alpina that overtook us on a mountain pass then wiped out right in front of us.
Our big fear of the day was the Triabunna stage, where there reportedly lurked a hard right turn just over a fast blind crest. If you miss the turn, you end up in the sea, they took pains to point out at the race briefing. Great! As we arrived there late in the day, the setting sun was positioned directly over the crest, and it would be almost impossible to see the turn until our socks got wet. As I calculated how quickly I could exit from a sinking car, the marshal approached with the dreaded last minute instruction board. Beware of loose gravel...on the crest. We rolled our eyes and rolled on to the start line, hearts pounding. Could it get any more life threatening? Youbetcha! The starting marshall approached. "Be extra careful. Another car has dumped oil on the track." "Where?" I asked, knowing the answer before I got the question out. "On the crest, just before the hard right" he replied. We powered off the start line, with me silently wishing I'd thought to wash the windscreen, which was about as easy to see through as a cup of coffee. We took the infamous turn with our hearts in our mouths and seeing nothing but dazzling sun glare. It was even nastier that I had imagined, but we used the Force (well it worked in Star Wars, didn't it) and made the stage with time to spare, after laying much rubber around the short street circuit of Triabunna. Surviving the watery leap was our proudest achievement thus far, and crossing the finish line was one of those moments when you know why you do this kind of thing, and want to come back and do it again next year.
|
|