Day 5 - West Coast
We arrived in Burnie last night nursing our tyres. We had plenty of issues through the day with a stage down graded to touring. By Service we knew that unless we could clean our tyres up we might not be running today.
Out with the heat gun and screw drivers, and off we set on the front tyres trying to clean out the grooves that had filled with melted rubber. During the day and heat build up on the fronts, which had melted the tread into the grooves, making the tyre look like a slick. Within 20 minutes we had retored the tyres back to something that looked like it had tread.
Paul and I stayed out at Wynyard (35 kms from Burnie) as accomodation in Burnie is scarce. As usual the volunteers driving the buses are pushing more hours than we are. Up at 4:00am so they can shuttle competitors around, and no finishing until 10:00pm at night. That doesn’t leave them with alot of time for eating and sleeping, but as usual they all push on. Thanks Coal and his wife for your help over this event.
We were fortunately across the road from a pub, so we ate and headed for bed ready for the 6:45am pickup.
By day 4 lunch we had only completed 1/2 the competitive kms for this event. That means the tyres still have a long way to go on day 5, and it is a big one. We had to get to the lunch break in Queenstown with tyres they would let us run on. More conservative driving to protect what little rubber we had left.
The Straun stage of over 30kms was down graded to touring due to a crash. The driver was suspected of having spinal injuries, and a helicopter took him out. That incident probably saved us from elimination for the afternoon.
Queenstown lunch break and the Tyre scrutineers are out with there depth gauges checking the cars as they arrive. After lunch there is Queenstown, then Mt Arrowsmith (close to 50kms of competitive in one stage) and Tarraleah.
We obviously had protected our tyre’s well, so we get the green light, and off we head knowing we have 3 stages to, and dry weather ahead.
By tarraleah we had done it. Cruising back to Wrest Point in Hobart, I reflectd on this year and why it was so hard. We had similar conditions last year and our tyres made it relatively easily. I put it down to pushing harder on days 1, 2 and 3 and realise that you can never truely relax in Targa. There is always some challenge that becomes your Mt Everest. Our Porsche 911 has proved to be the best piece of machinary I have ever owned. She has never let us down and that takes a tremendous weight off your shoulders knowing that your equipment (if treated well) won’t let you down.