The Heart of Targa

Targa Tasmania 2006

The old hands say that Targa is won and lost today. Certainly the tension was upped a notch as the field commenced Leg Four of the event -- a day that features one of Targa's signature roads, the 37.48km Cethana stage.

The day started tragically, however, when a car lost control on the Hobart Domain city stage and hit a group of spectators. The incident (which involved a Japanese team driving one of the eight new generation Coopers in the event and injured three spectators) will be investigated and authorities will no doubt make recommendations in the long term. For all the fun that Targa is, it is still a fully-fledged motorsport event and needs to be treated as such.

The day was a mix of roads and terrain from the wide open highway-like section at Colebrook just north of Richmond on Hobart's outskirts to the cut and thrust of the tighter north western roads closer to Ulverstone and Burnie. There was even a flying lap of Symmons Plains thrown in for good measure.

At Symmons Team MINI CarPoint #989 car co-driver Justin Hunt had nothing to do other than sit down, shut up and hang on! We logged a respectable 10sec penalty (over the base time of 1min 0sec) with Spencer Lowndes (back in the right seat of #993 after Grant's one-day stint) and Chris Randell one second quicker and Tim Leahey and Paul Flintoff in the last Team MINI car (#992) another second quicker.

The track blast showed the potential of the cars' chassis on smooth bitumen. And the big brakes -- wow! It augurs well for an outing later in the year at Winton (Vic) for Team MINI.

After Symmons it was more long transport stages and into the Targa stages proper with Mole Creek, then the first of five after-lunch stages, the daunting 37.48km Cethana.

For Justin and yours truly, Cethana was the first stage where we started to pass similarly paced cars. Concentrating on the pace notes while still having to get past other cars, some faster in a straight line was confronting at first, but we got the hang of it and in the end wore the extra places on the road like a badge of honour.

Cethana climbs across some pretty high terrain before plunging into deep valleys and out again. Once again we were willing the Team MINI CarPoint Cooper S JCW up the hills and reveling in the amazing corner speed and braking ability downhill. In officially 'intermediate' conditions, the 20 minutes dead it took us to cover the stage was over in no time. We were more than pleased with 1.04 gap between us and Spencer and Chris the fastest of our trio.

Some of the other Coopers shone on this stage too. The fast #923 Sherrin Hire Cooper S of Grant Sherrin and Fook Sueng Lee impressed with the 2004 Cooper S of Stuart Jones and Steve Green (#963) even quicker.

The other long stage of the day South Riana (24.48km) highlighted this type of motorsport is quite literally a team effort. The organisers had moved the start by a few hundred metres, a fact we'd missed. This meant we were "off the notes" and driving blind for the first 6km or so before Justin was able to pick up a recognizable turn and get us back up to speed.

Those slower first few kilometres cost us close to 20sec we reckon. In the end we were 43sec slower than Tim and Paul who posted a time just 31sec over the base of 10min30sec.

The two 'fast' MINIs battled it to and fro over the afternoon stages with the honours (in terms of number of fastest stages) going to Tim. 

As the day closed we had our first mechanical hiccup on the #993 car of Spencer and Chris. A driveshaft popped out after the finish of the final stage of the day. Our service team of David, Peter and Ben jumped into action and had the car back in action without penalties.

And the #989 CarPoint Cooper S? After a precautionary brake bleed, fuel and a wash, it was tucked up into Parc Ferme and put on display for the night...

AT THE POINTY END
Though the accident in the Domain grabbed the headlines, the race continued with the perfect clear dry autumn days playing into the hands of the Porsche pairing of Jim Richards and Barry Oliver. Indeed, unless there is a massive change in conditions, as of the end of Leg Four, Richards is staring down the barrel of his eighth Targa win.

The duo further extended their lead by a further 12sec in their two-wheel drive 2003 Porsche 911 GT2, over Targa championship contender, South Australian, Steve Glenney who's Subaru WRX STi now trails by 37sec.

"Our suspension has been fine today after yesterday's problems," said Glenney. "Today's been all about keeping on pace and conserving tyres. All we can do is the best we can and keep pressing on."

With many other highly ranked competitors falling by the wayside, more notably on the 37.48km Cethana stage, Ray Vandersee in his, two-wheel drive Honda S200-engine Skelta showed that he is a force to be reckoned with, shifting into third position by clocking faster times than Mitsubishi factory driver Warwick Rooklyn on all afternoon stages.

"We think we might be in third place now after we did really well on Cethana," said an elated Vandersee. "We had a brilliant day this afternoon and it keeps getting better. Fine weather will be just brilliant for us!"

Following Vandersee's attack Rooklyn, and his navigator Linda Long, had no choice but to play second-fiddle to the Skelta, finishing 48sec further afield in their four-wheel drive Evolution Lancer IX.

Leg Four also spelt trouble for Peter Brock's Daytona Coupe, with the gearbox on the Shelby Replica failing. This mechanical set-back saw Brock contesting the last two stages of the day in only fifth gear.

Two noteworthy movers and shakers were Subaru drivers Dean Herridge and Tony Longhurst. Herridge started today's leg in 25th position after his chicane-related penalty and finished in stunning 13th.

Longhurst will start the event's final of competition in seventh position, with 2min 49sec to make up for a podium finish.

Sunday's fifth and final leg comprises nine stages, with a competitive distance of 145.27km.  At 47.24km, the event's longest stage, Mt Arrowsmith, will likely seal the fate of the event.