Day Two

The event just gets better and better ... Another simply beautiful day here, barely a cloud in the sky. 8 stages today, run in the Top right corner of Tas, and including a number of well known stages with 'reputations'!

An early start had us queuing for at the Sidling Stage to open before 0800 having run 50kms or so from Silverdome, unfortunately camera mismanagement meant that we don't have footage of this stage, which is a shame, as it's one of the famous stages. 14.3kms of twisty, tight road narrow in places, and with some damp patches, quite a big crowd in some spots too (always be wary where the crowds are, they quite like to see shunts!) We took a couple of minutes to get into the swing of it, and Jason found the constant switchback quite tricky to brace himself and not get flung from side to side! Eventually found our rythym and comfortably achieved a 10:54 against a trophy time of 13mins.

Stage 2 was Ledgerwood, in open country, where it was possible to get more of a look at the road ahead, a great stage, and the most competitive stage we've run, actually outrunning Targa regular David Ogg for the first time, but only by one second! 5:77km in 3:28 (Trophy Time 5:00).

The next three stages were run on the relatively major A3 road, (not exactly motorway you understand) which had been closed for the occasion. 7.7km Moorina, 13km Weldborough Pass, and 7km Pyengana, and just a couple of road kms between each stage. Pretty intense, as these were more twisty stages in and out of sunlight and shade, with some damp patches too. My favourite section was the last bit of Pyengana, nice sweeping curves, back out of the trees, and with a good camber - the TR is great through this sort of faster stuff. All stages cleared within Trophy time, and a run into little port town of St Helen's for an early lunch, and our second refuel of the morning.

A lovely drive about 40km down the eastern coast road, in company with the TR3A of Stephen and Ginetta Rochester, who along with their crew, have been super-helpful to us. The scenery here is stunning, shame we don't have time to stop and take some photos.

11km Elephant Pass stage up next, and we arrived to find a very short queue into stage, and were ushered in a bit quickly, my mistake, Jason wasn't ready, so we took a minute or so to get up to speed on the notes. Two days in a row I have made small mistakes on the first stage after lunch, need to cut that out. A very tight narrow stage, with a big drop along my side, not confidence inspiring! Ran the trophy time, but not our best stage!

Then 12km Rossarden, the one they've all been scaring us about, again very tight, but now with drops and steep descents. It starts up in the hills, real 'Deliverance' country... First few kms are the open, visible fast and flowing road that suits us, then it starts to drop downhill, and drops over the edge, into a winding track carved out of the side of the hill, dropping ever down into the valley ... you really don't want to run out of brakes here, even if you're actually travelling relatively slowly because of all the sharp twists, fortunately I'm confident in the car in this regard, even if I did dab them occasionally just to make sure before it became urgent. A very happy crew at the finish of this stage, especially as we hit the Trophy Time again, 7:57 against target of 10mins. Watch the video, if I can ever get it to load on YouTube.

Another long road stage, run in company with the Rochesters' TR3A again, more spectacular scenery, very reminiscent to me of Tanzania, except without the wildebeest... Final stage was another crowd-pleasing blast through the streets, this time Longford. We attacked this a bit more having been much too cautious in the Prologue stage.

A great day, super stages, more hardcore than Day 1, longer stages, and longer road links. But crew and car going well, and getting stuck in now. Serviced the car, including a brake bleed after heavy use today. Everything in order. Back into the Velodrome, and off for a shower, dinner and blog!

Still on for a Trophy, and all the people we've befriended are still running, hopefully more of the same tomorrow.

Just got results through, we are now 58th of about 70 cars remaining in Late Classic division on Handicap, and 65th of about 90 cars left in the outright Classic Division overall. So we have moved a little up the order, and not just because of those that have dropped out! We are now 1:32 behind our Mentors/Chauffeurs/Chaperones David 'Genghis' Ogg and Michael 'Attilla' Farrell.