MOTORSPORT: Many twists to new tropical tarmac rally

Australia’s leading tarmac rally competitors, Jason White and his co-driver uncle John, say the new Targa Great Barrier Reef, which is now just a fortnight away, will be more strategic and a tougher challenge than any event they’ve previously tackled.

The Whites, seven-time winners of Targa Tasmania, the world’s largest tarmac rally that has been held in the island state every year since 1992, have had two preliminary runs over the new tropical course for the August 31-September 2 event in and around Cairns.

They say the tight, narrow roads will make it “a completely different challenge”.

“Some of the stages have got more corners per kilometre than most of the stages in Tassie,” Jason White said.

“One of the 18 stages in particular has all the tight sections of Hellyer Gorge (the famous Targa Tasmania stage) but they are strung together for 20km – the longest straight in the stage is about 100 metres.

“There is no real time for the tyres to take a breather, so for those stages we will really have to show a bit of caution with the [tyre] temperature.

“At least three quarters of the event, the roads are very, very narrow.

“Some cars will have a tyre hanging over the bitumen just driving normally … they are really narrow.

“Some are quite fast and narrow, so car placement is going to be critical.

“As a whole it is something that is completely different to anything we have got anywhere else around Australia.

“It looks like it is going to be an exceptional event and a completely different challenge.”

The first Targa event to be held in Queensland, Targa Great Barrier Reef has attracted a field of more than 200 cars, from early classics to the latest exotic supercars.

Organisers say the 900km course “not only gives competitors the challenges they expect from a Targa event but also takes the field to a number of key locations in Far North Queensland”.

They have promised “one of the world’s biggest champagne showers” at 5:00pm on Sunday, September 2, with all 48 of the event’s competition winners celebrating on a stage together.

The new rally is the third round of the 2018 CAMS Australian Targa Championship, with
Victoria’s Targa High Country in November being the fourth and final round.

Targa Tasmania and Tassie’s shorter Targa North-West earlier this year were the first two rounds.

The Whites have had their 2016 Dodge Viper ACR Extreme overhauled since winning Targa Tasmania in April – that seventh success leaving the Tasmanian pair just one short of the record of the legendary Jim Richards and his long-time co-driver Barry Oliver.

The Viper’s front chassis rails, damaged towards the end of Targa Tasmania, have been fixed while the suspension and ball joints have been given “a bit of a birthday”.

The targa championship has several classes for modern and classic cars but Jason White expects stiff competition from a GT2-class 2014 Lotus Exige S.

To be driven by former circuit racing champion Paul Stokell, a Tasmanian now based in Queensland, with fellow Queenslander Erin Kelly, White expects it to be better suited to the roads in the tropics than the Viper and the main challenger for outright honours.

The championship is being led overall by Tasmanian-based South Australian Steve Glenney and co-driver Andy Sarandis, from SA, in a GT4 class 2015 Subaru WRX STI. (Glenney also is running second in Australia’s gravel rally championship this year).

The event will get underway outside the Reef Hotel Casino in Cairns early on Friday, August 31, with cars leaving the official start from 7.20am through to 9.30am and heading to the opening stage at Greenhill.

From there they will tackle the Gillies Range before a visit to Atherton from 9.20am to noon, with the public able to see the cars up close for the first time there.

They will then come back down Gillies Range and head to Lake Morris Road for the first run up to Copperlode Dam. After reaching the top, they will come back down and return to the Cairns Convention Centre for the first overnight stop.

On the Saturday the field will leave the Convention Centre from 6.45am to 8.30am and head to stages at Upper Barron, Lake Eacham and Glen Allyn, with a stop in Malanda for people to see the cars from 9.20am to 12.30pm.

The cars will then tackle Glen Allyn and Lake Eacham in the reverse direction, before heading to Lake Morris Road again for a second run up and down that stretch of road.

On the Sunday the cars will leave the Convention Centre from 6.45am to 8.30am and head straight to the Kuranda Range, before stages at Malanda, Moregatta and Millaa Millaa and on to Ravenshoe to showcase the cars to the community again between 10.45am and 1.30pm.

The field will then return to Cairns, via the Millaa Millaa and Moregatta stages in the reverse direction, before crossing the finish line in the heart of Cairns from 2.30pm.

The Whites have driven all the stages twice but Jason White said it had been “a very tricky reconnaissance because the Gillies Range and the Kuranda Range and a couple of other places are very high-traffic areas”.

“We got a pretty fair idea of where everything is heading though and we’ve shot a heap of video of the stages,” he said.

“A fair bit of the ‘recce’ we do is just checking the notes against the video we have shot in the car.

“It’s all part of the sport. You can’t expect to go out there and go fast if you haven’t done the preparation.”