....first, you must finish
It’s an old adage in motorsport, “to finish first, first you must finish”. It’s a gentle reminder that it’s not always the fastest driver or the quickest car that wins the race, but the one that crosses the line first. It’s an acknowledgement that being fast isn’t the only thing you need, you also need reliability.
Rally can be a cruel sport, for starters it’s essentially an endurance event that often spans several days, and the timing and scoring works such that any penalties for doing the wrong thing or for breaking down and missing a control point are severe enough that a single missed stage will generally see you out of contention completely. We have first-hand experience in this with a breakdown in 2017 THC dropping us from a comfortable 2nd place to a DNF, and on an earlier event we accumulated 90 seconds of penalties and then missed 2nd place by 91 seconds – it would have been close.
In 17 odd years of Tarmac Rally we have learnt the hard way about how tough the events can be - our first event ended in engine failure, the second lost several stages with mechanical gremlins and the third saw us spend 15 mins in a paddock after a mid stage excursion….
It took us 4 years to build a car that would survive the rigours of a multi day event and then a few more years to make that car fast enough to be competitive, and then a few more years to dial back the off road excursions (although that one is still a work in progress…).
Over the years we have seen alternator failure, broken fan belts, diff failure, brake failure, engine failure, bent suspension and overheating and each one required either a better plan or better execution to ensure the next event was a success. To date we’ve never had a DNF with the same failure twice…
Targa High Country (2020 event postponed in the COVID era to early 2021) is a favourite event of ours, we have been there every year since 2014 and been lucky enough to stand on the podium every year in one class or another except for 2018 where a broken distributor shaft robbed us of second place. But every year there are sob stories – flat tyres, bent steering, fuel problems, electrical gremlins and every one of those came as a surprise to the crew, no-one goes to a rally expecting something to fail. Occasionally a failure comes as a result of pushing too hard (tyres, brakes, crashes etc) but mostly it’s bad luck or a weakness not before surfaced. Many times we have been gifted a podium spot through someone else’s misfortune.
2020 THC saw a slightly smaller field, COVID uncertainty and the rescheduled date made many unable to attend but as always the field was still a quality affair. For us in Classic GT that meant only 4 competitors in our category, our 240z, the Griffin 1600, Kaplan’s mental Walkinshaw and our first encounter with the Philip/Brown Nissan R32 Skyline GTR. Yes, Godzilla has joined the game.
There’s a whole other discussion about how a twin turbo AWD GTR gets to be a classic but it still seems a fair fight with our old carburettors so we’re good to go.
The Weather at Mt Buller always throws a curve ball for Targa. Our last visit in 2019 saw so much snow that the first mountain stage was abandoned after several crews (ourselves included) couldn’t even make it through the snow to reach the start. While an earlier event was so hot the road melted.
This year it was the rain and low cloud that turned up the excitement dial to 11 as the dense fog coincided with the decision to start the Merimbah stage at the top of Mt Buller rather than half way down as in other years. This saw crews leaving the start line at Stage one heading directly into a near white out with added rain – thankfully the first stage is set with a low base (and a minimum time to boot) and while this is set for a comfortable pace the reality in these conditions saw us so slow that we didn’t get close to the base time.
Stage two was the famous run back up Mt Buller and while the roads had dried down the bottom it was clear that the low cloud and rain was going to feature heavily as crews got closer to the summit.
Clear roads gave way to rain and fog and again as we neared the end of the stage the visibility dropped to mere meters and there were a couple of close calls when the corners appeared quite late.
Still we ended the day in one piece and second in GT, but unfortunately the GTR fell off the road coming up the hill and while the crew were OK the car was unable to continue the event.
Thankfully the weekend weather improved and the rest of the event stayed dry but the Griffin 1600 encountered some mechanical issues and missed a handful of stages.
So this had us heading in the long Jamieson stage on Sunday morning fully 5 minutes behind the Kaplan Walkinshaw so barring incident they were going to romp home with the win. With 5 mins lead they could probably even stop and change a flat tyre and still beat us.
So it came as a bit of a shock to see the lunchtime results pop up with us leading Kaplan by nearly 3 minutes. Turns out the Walkinshaw popped the throttle cable off mid stage on Jamieson and the crew lost 8 minutes effecting a repair to get them out of the stage.
Even the most sophisticated machine can still be halted by a $2 part and while we were obviously happy to vault into the lead it’s always sad to see competitors disadvantaged by such things.
Still, it’s not over yet and there are three stages left in the day (and over 50 competitive kilometres) and you just know that Adam is going to reel most of that time back. In fact he does just that taking 22 seconds on Devils River and over 50 seconds on Eildon but ultimately it’s not enough and even with another 15 seconds on the street stage at Mansfield they still fall short by just over a minute and have to settle for second.
For us it’s our first win in Classic GT and finishing 23rd outright against the modern cars showed that we were still quick despite the smaller field and the setbacks to the faster cars in our class.
It’s a classic case of “being in it to win it” - and taking home the big trophy at the end? Well that’s a first…..
