Inside Targa - The Other Skoda

There were two Skoda Octavia RS models at Targa Tasmania: the rapid bright orange racecar and a silver standard version being driven a lot slower. That one was mine, and it proved just as capable on Tasmania's brilliant roads as the 'official' entry.

It's impossible to follow Targa Tasmania stage by stage. Firstly, the cars are racing on closed roads at about twice the speed you can or are legally able to. And, if you go 'into' a stage to watch the field blast past, you have to be there an hour or more before the road is closed to traffic and are stuck there until the last car goes by -- that could be 3-4 hours later. By the time the road is reopened the rally is many stages ahead of you.

So the best thing to do was to pick a couple of service stops, stage starts, or finishes each day to meet up with 'Sinkers' (driver Mike Sinclair) and co-driver Billy Hayes to find out how there were going.

Some days I followed the Performance Parts & Engineering service crew -- a two-man dynamo consisting of engineer Darren and Sinkers' good mate, Dave -- and on others I chauffeured PP&E boss Alan Heaphy between stages.

Heaphy and I go back to the mid-'90s and the early days of the V8 Supercars. Back then he was running Wayne Gardner's team but he's seen action at the highest level all over the world for the last 30 years, including managing works Nissan touring and sports car teams.

In Australia, he also managed the Gibson Motorsport Nissan GT-R domination of the Australian Touring Car championship in the early-'90s and ran other V8 Supercar teams. So we did a lot of reminiscing and story-swapping and you reckon we didn't have a few laughs!

These days Heaphy's business concentrates on preparing a phalanx of Mitsubishi EVOs for road rally and circuit racing, as well as fettling the Team Skoda carsales Octavia, which, incidentally ran faultlessly.

On the days I travelled solo, Darren would give me a rendezvous point that I programmed into the Octavia's sat-nav and, lo and behold! I never got lost. That's a first.

If there's one reason why Targa has just celebrated its 20th anniversary, it's the roads.

Tasmania is criss-crossed by some of the greatest driving roads in the world, through some of the most scenic countryside anywhere. Generally the roads are in excellent condition, sparsely populated and rarely do they run straight and flat for long.

They duck and dive and sweep through forests, over mountains, across grasslands and present almost every challenge available to a driver, even at the speed limit.

There are hazards too. Targa was run a few weeks earlier this year and for the first four and half days the weather was perfect but when the rain hit, roads became treacherous.

At first glance, you might not expect the Octavia RS to be so good on the above roads but it constantly surprised me, particularly when I was 'having a lash'. It has good grip, the chassis is stiff-ish but still has enough compliance to soak up bumps and 'yumps' and the engine has good power and torque, and is well-matched to the double-clutch DSG sequential auto 'box.

The steering is well-weighted and accurate; driving position almost ideal, seats supportive and comfortable and it has excellent brakes -- handy when you've misjudged one of the many blind or tightening-radius corners on the island.

And, like its racing brother, it humbled many a more, shall we say, capable car (on paper, at least) on some of the trickier roads. Most of the time I forgot I was driving a wagon.

On the last night of Targa, I had to leave the picturesque seaside town of Strahan and take actual stage roads back to Queenstown (where I'd just come from!) at night and in the rain. I wasn't relishing it, actually.

It was pitch black (one complaint, the Skoda's lights aren't brilliant on high beam) and there were 33km of consisting twisting roads ahead. The Skoda lapped it up and I was able to travel quickly enough that other cars were pulling over to let me by.

Speeds weren't crazy, mind you, but the Octavia (with traction and stability controls left on, of course) gave me the confidence to press on. The stage would have been incredible in the racecar, in daylight and on dry road with semi-slick tyres.

On the last day of Targa I ran ahead of the rally to ensure I got the finish at Hobart's Wrest Point Casino before the field and basically tackled all the competitive stages from Queenstown to Hobart. And what a drive it was.

From the dizzy, dangerous climb out of Queenstown to the rain-swept challenge of the rally's longest stage, Mount Arrowsmith, it was a day behind the wheel to savour even if conditions were miserable.

Both Octavias made the finish line in Hobart unmarked and unscathed, not a bad effort for a family station wagon. Of course, I did beat Sinkers in one challenge: my Skoda averaged 8.2L/100km for the rally. Beat that mate!

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