Team Skoda carsales in tough Targa fight

Team Skoda carsales has maintained its second position in the Showroom category of Targa Tasmania after Leg One of this year's rally. The first leg included eight competitive stages in a loop from Launceston to Sheffield and back.

The team's Skoda Octavia RS is in a tough battle with the more powerful Mazda3 MPS driven by young rally star Brendan Reeves. While the team lost some time to Reeves in Leg One, driver Mike Sinclair and co-driver Bill Hayes are confident of closing the gap in the coming days.

The Octavia RS is safe in second place, though, more than 2min clear of the third-placed entrant, the McKay/Hallstone MX-5.

Sinclair is still fine-tuning the handling of the Octavia race car. At each scheduled service stop, shock absorbers were adjusted by Darren from car preparers Performance Parts & Engineering, starting with the front dampers then, when they were working right, resetting the rears.

"It's been a really good first day for us to get everything sorted on the car and we've driven within ourselves; this car continues to surprise me," Sinclair said. Hayes agreed.

"It is surprising, it's quite deceptive. It's not until you get to the end of the long straights that you realise you've been up around the 200km/h mark on many occasions. Luckily the brakes are absolutely awesome so it's easy to pull up for the tight corners."

Both said the 15km-long Sheffield stage was the highlight of the Leg although it didn't turn out that way for some entrants.

"It wasn't so good for about 10 others," Hayes said. "By the time we got there, there were cars on roofs, in gullys and in trees but luckily for us we dissected our way through and had a very good run through that stage.

"The good thing was no one was hurt. Unfortunately, people tend to run out of road just before they run out of talent."

Sinclair and Hayes reckoned that the best was yet to come from the Octavia RS and that Leg One's roads didn't suit the Skoda

 Leg Two is another eight-stage day and includes some of Targa's most iconic and challenging stages like The Sideling and Elephant Pass.

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