Diesel daze: recce in an oiler

We were in the wilds of northern Tasmania passing through Deloraine for the fifth time that day (a Saturday, our first in Tasmania for Targa 2010) when my 13 year old son rang the mobile.

"Have you won anything, Dad?" he asked.

With the Optus network delivering scant mobile coverage I was surprised he got through. It was also then that two text messages arrived from mates... With much the same query... Looks like I hadn't explained very well why we were in Tassie.

Our drive of the full Targa course was 'recce' or reconnaissance to give it its proper name. It's the process during which you drive each stage of the tarmac rally well ahead of the actual event and, in conjunction with your co-driver, write the pacenotes that you'll use while competing.

Given the late start to our Targa campaign, recce was tight... In terms of when we could fit it in and how many days we could spare. In the end we had four days during which we drove ever stage at least twice.

As I explained to my son, there are no prizes for recce -- this non-competitive process is done in a normal car on open (two-way) roads at legal speeds. It is also arguably the most important part of any rally -- in terms of determining both your pace and safety.

Pacenotes are a script for each stage. Using a standard (or at least agreed) code they describe the stage and chart its course and its corners.

Ever watched the coverage of the World Rally Championship and heard the co-driver waffle away in what to many sounds like another language? Even the English speakers can be indecipherable at first. In reality at the heart of the code they are using is a simple numbered clockface plus other verbal shorthand to describe the angle of the corner and what's around it or over the next hill.

Having both been out of a competition car for some time, our Targa Tasmania 2010 recce was an important time for co-driver Justin Hunt and I to reacquaint ourselves with Tassie's best roads and to art of pacenoting. Well more me than Justin -- the latter is in his blood.

Those of you who followed previous Targa coverage will know rallying is very much a team effort -- inside and outside the car. "Without good communication between co-driver and driver your rally can be over before it begins," yours truly wrote then. Nothing's changed.

Targa Tasmania is unusual as it does not use any stage twice in a single event. This year, like last, two stages are the reverse of others (in part or in toto) but that still means they are very different pieces of road. With 40 special stages that makes recce a substantial task -- especially for the co-driver.

That the Targa course has changed manifestly since we last competed there made the process even more important. Given the fact time was short we purchased basic notes and then set about tailoring them to our own wants. By doing this we probably shaved three days from the time we'd normally take starting from scratch.

Waving the Skoda flag we took an Octavia to Tasmania across on the ferry from Melbourne. It was a wagon just like the racecar... Well, not quite -- in fact, it was diesel and a manual, not the petrol/DSG combo we'll campaign.

Putting more than 3700km under its wheels in just four days, I can safely say that we both have a new found appreciation for the talents of the Octavia RS, its powertrain engineers and especially the team that designed its seats.

Driving from dawn (or before in one case) to dark, we'd be forgiven for hating the car by the end of the four days but the reverse is true. The 125kW turbodiesel powertrain was both frugal and muscular (if not willing) and the cabin with its various hidey holes and smart storage options swallowed Justin's myriad writing implements', not to mention our water bottles, snacks, lunches on the run et al.

In the back we were able to easily secure our luggage using standard tie-down points and the standard luggage blind kept the valuables (video gear, cameras, etc) out of sight when we stopped overnight.

Though we were obviously on public roads there's an imperative to keep the pace 'sporting' when you're doing this -- from the point of making the notes more realistic but more so from the aspect of actually getting the stages done. By way of example, Targa's longest stage Mount Arrowsmith is over 56km long so just driving it twice requires over 120km of driving...

In choosing the Octavia RS TDI we were smarter than we gave ourselves credit for... For a start we could easily put away around 700km to a tank, but the torque of the high-tech turbodiesel powerplant made traversing the often very windy route back to the start of each stage less tiring. On three runs of Arrowsmith we happily average 94km/h and just over 7.0L/100km.

Co-driver Hunt applauded the seats -- it's not easy to juggle note pads, a GPS, two pencils and a highlight and hold on, while writing Swahili... The well bolstered standard seats of the RS made this arcade game... well, not easy (only true race seats would do that) but certainly easier than less appropriately equipped vehicles...

What are pacenotes?
Pacenotes are a method via which a rally stage described. Various methodologies are used to describe how sharp the corner is (a corner might be graded 1, very tight, to 10, almost straight) and left or right is added to indicate direction. After that it's possible to include where to 'apex' the corner, whether the corner may 'tighten' or 'open' and what comes after it -- another corner, a long straight or perhaps even a combination of a short straight and another corner. The combinations are almost infinite.

Additional information can prompt the driver to 'cut' the corner, or in the case of a tarmac event like Targa, more often it's 'don't cut'. In our 'language' the words 'flat crest' don't describe the shape of a crest, just that we can stay on the throttle at full noise over it.

Pacenotes tell the driver what's coming and where to place the car -- when they are perfect you're working a corner or more ahead and the pace can be far higher than you could ever drive on sight alone.

The challenge when recce is underway is to be able to mentally place yourself in the rally car, at race pace and write notes that make sense. Sometimes that's easier said than done...

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