Snowman

Yep Targa Newfoundland, Pikes Peak and I was also looking at some of the European Hillclimb events as well. All would be good fun I reckon.

So Kate Middleton was a stripper and you gave her a months worth of wages in tips?? It will be interesting to see the Targa footage this year. They lost so many front runners along the way the whole week in both outright and classics that the story could be a bit dis-jointed on TV. I still don't think EM will get much (if any) coverage even though there were a couple of cars running in the top 10 outright for a bit there. So I think if you really want coverage in an older car you need to go the Matt Close option and put your hand up to run in outright even if you are in an EM car. I haven't decided what I am going to do in the future but I think if I do run Targa again it will be in outright - not sure whether that will be in the current car or else in a new one. Some of the guys like Matt Close, Dean Evans and Dean Herridge showed you don't need a $1M Lambo to do ok in outright - and hell Brenno's effort was simply awesome. But I think in the short term a trip to Europe with Brisby to go Ice racing in Finland and driving an F1 car in Southern France might take priority over tarmac rallying. Targa is great fun - but there are so many other things out there to do with cars as well.

Mark has written an article confirming my feelings after China. "But we're still learning and we saw in China that qualifying position might now be less important than in the past. We only have six sets of dry tyres for qualifying and the race (three sets of prime, three sets of option) and while you don't want to be qualifying 18th every weekend, you're better off saving a fresh set of tyres for the race rather than doing another run in Q3 to gain one grid position. My fastest lap in the race was 1.4sec faster than anyone else's. That was due to my having more new sets of option tyres in the race. It's given us plenty to think about." So I can see Q3 will now be a 1 lap wonder only and EVERYONE will have the 1 virgin set of tyres for the race. So that will pretty much cancel everyones performance out - although there might still be some who run with the faster tyre at the start, some in the middle and some at the end.

The introduction of Yumple Scrumple was possibly the highlight of Targa! It's really good stuff.

"Alonso was the subject of an odd situation in China when his rear wing opened outside of the designated DRS zone. Following Michael Schumacher, Alonso's wing activated between turns 14 and 16, despite the zone being marked out as a section of the straight before turn 14. The reason was an error that caused the system to offset by 450 metres, costing Alonso time. He will not be punished, but the FIA are looking in to the cause of the incident."

Angus does a fine enough job supplying competitors with his wifes baked goods whilst you queue for stages! On the fuel front - I run 98RON and was caught out at St Helens. Lucky my crew man Brisby was able to meet us before Elephant pass with 40L. But like Melinda I did most of the event with just the 1 trusty service crew guy. I think the only time I actually used the fuel service for the whole week was after Cethana. I did have another mate waiting after Queenstown with 20L before I did Mt Arrowsmith but otherwise Troy was always able to be where I needed him for the event. It'd probably be a different story if I ran E85 or even if I ran a zillion kw's but I didn't find fuel a remote issue this year. A full tank at the start of the day and Troy with 60L on board pretty much had me covered every day other than Day 4.

haha - yeah it's not an issue. There are some that no-one is getting near. And the car that won outright still had over 20mins worth of penalty time (or total time over base if you like).

No you get 0 as your recorded time. Your total Targa time is always your accumulated time over the base times. The idea (I presume) - especially over the first few days where the pointy guys all clear a number of stages is to keep the competition closer for longer. It also means the numbers at the end are more easily handled. So for example your total end time might be 11mins 28s rather than 2hrs, 42mins and 28s.

If you look at the results of say High Plains this year http://www.rallyresults.com.au/targa/TT2011/showStaget.asp?paramVal4=0&paramVal3=3&paramVal2=17&rVal=4520&paramVal1=5 You will see that there is a "base time" of 2mins. Your official time for the stage is every second over 2mins. So if you can do the stage in under 2mins you have cleared the stage.

+1 It was an awesome drive but he had something the rest didn't. There is also no doubt the reason Hammo won was because he had that 1 set of virgin softs. Just look at the lap times he did on thats set of tyres. They say that they don't cycle well and that race proved just how accurate that assumption was so I think you will find going forwards that all of the front guys will keep at least 1 set of new softs up their sleeves as this has shown that 1 new set of softs in the race is worth probably a min 3 spots in Quali.

The late time wasn't 15 total - it was 15 to lunch and 15 after. But still even other than Gunns Plains we noticed we JUST made some of the in times even without stopping for fuel or anything. It got so worrisome that we even stopped pulling over after stages to put our helmets in the back of the car which is just crazy. I wasn't even prepared to stop to get something to eat and drink on the Sat for fear of the late time! I'm not experienced enough to know what is right or wrong penalty wise but it seems crazy to me that people who were 5mins over late after a stage got the same penalty as say Tony Warren who completely missed 3 stages. Anyways - as a side issue I put together some of the highlights from our adventures.

LOL - my philosophy is pretty simple. If you ain't doing it for a living then you must be doing it for fun. And if you ain't having fun then why are you doing it?? I learnt that lesson in the past. Doesn't mean I don't go flat out - just means I don't get hung up on if I'm first or last.

PS - how do you put a longer than 10min vid on youtube??

LOL - yeah anyone with a mullet should be banned But that main speed camera thing was funny. I'm not sure if I got done or not - but it was on a MASSIVE downhill and as we went past I noticed I was maybe 5kms over (which in Vic is done for). I really don't speed on transport nor even when doing recce in stages. BUT I also try and avoid braking when driving in a straight line as sudden brake lights can make people panic. I'm sure there is a law in Vic on not being able to place speed camera's on big hills like that.

Speak to Bris (Roy on the forums). He's far more the expert on all things R32 GTS-T than me. I was still suffering the shakes from the drinking session the night before to really care too much about it (he was the interested party)

Well I just remembered cleaning it the year before - and given this year on Day 2 I was a minimum 15s faster on every stage in similar conditions I figured it MUST be easy to clean. But I did run pretty damn on it this year (just in case) and ran the clear time dead on. So yeah - it was easy to clean if you went ballistic

Bris and I stopped to check it out on the way back to the boat this week. It's pretty rough. Bris was keen - but now isn't.

Yeah my POV1 did weird things like produce video upside down when uploaded into Movie maker, or else in a weird shade of pink/purple. I ended up having to use Premier Pro to get it to work ok. The VBox is definitely easier - although I would like them to bring out a HD upgrade as well. The crash doesn't look like much fun though Timmy. It's a funny stage though - we know if you go balls out on it us EM guys can JUST clear it. So I know I went a little ragged at the end making sure I got it done and it nearly unraveled for me with half the car in the dirt.

I lifted at the school. That one scares me I have no doubt fatigue was a huge part of my problem. We missed breakfast because muggins here decided to change his tyre strategy last minute which meant we had to get in early (early start on the Sat anyways!) to put the new tyres on before we left. Then because my car still currently uses rear left tyres far more than rear rights (?? don't know either) I had Brisby running around trying to swap those tyres around from left to rights. This meant we also ran out of drinking water in the car before Cethana and never caught up with Bris who keeps the supplies before the lunch stop. And with everyone getting pinged 20mins for being a minute late I never stopped to rehydrate / get some food (and infact during lunch we had to fix the bloody front shock so I never got anything to eat for lunch either that day!) But it was a big big lesson learnt on looking after yourself as a priority for these things. You just can't skimp and keep your mind functioning right. Oh and I know the corner in Queenstown. My notes have changed to 8L BECOMES !3L>t (I've re-written a bunch of Johns notes that I just don't like the way it was originally written. But the BECOMES call is one Steve Glenney uses that I think works well)

It's also after about 15-16mins of INTENSE driving (doesn't get much more intense than Riana - maybe Cethana but those 2 are easily the most full on). So I think my brain was pretty fried at that point. Farken good fun though. It's funny how Mt Rowland and Riana are 2 of my absolute favorite stages and yet have both caused me grief in the past.

100% my fault. It was the way the notes were done - the 7R>t * 4L just didn't compute and I just didn't know this bit of road well enough. The reality is that for Targa I did around 50hrs of Video recce - but my Riana footage was from 2008 when it was Riana Short and didn't cover that stretch of road. And then because of the Touareg issues we had on recce my full day that was planned for Cethana, Mt Rowland, Paloona and Riana was condensed into a single pass pretty much and as you know Benny if you want to be serious in this game you really need to put the effort into learning the bits you need to know. I mean its funny how Adam went into that same spot and yet someone had even been there before him as well! It's obviously an easy spot to stuff! (Vid of Adam going into the same spot attached!)

Here's another vid of some highlights from our Riana stage this year (where I had my little whoopsy)

Thanks all. Was heaps and heaps of fun. Super happy with my result - puts an end to last year for me now. Couldn't have caught Blaise even if I didn't hurt the car on Riana (damaged shock after driving through a fence!) but my speed this year was way up on last year so 2nd was as good as I was going to get. But well done to my buddy on taking out not only this event but the Australian Targa Championship as well. Big thanks to Matt for sitting next to me all fortnight and for providing some great laughs. Will try and put together some of our best parts into a video. Also to Bris for being a super champ running service in a pretty thankless job and always being there where and when we needed him. Super efforts from some others on here too. Melinda did a great job especially since before the event started it looked to us like it was about to die! (and 2nd fastest across the 58.8km Mt Arrowsmith on a damp road!) and of course The Woo man who kept us all entertained with his Top 10 outright stories in the 999 car.

Gosh it was fun to be back in it today!

Hopefully the top of Rossarden has been washed away. I shit myself going over there!! LOL I'm on the ferry tonight ready to get into it.