Trophy Time

The post event dinner was held on the Monday evening, the day after the event, and was huge, well over 500 people. A good dinner, although perhaps the presentations went on a bit too long, but it was well compered. Highlights included the Party Tape, which the tv crew had put together from the more amusing or entertaining clips during the week, it was very well edited, and if you've made a fool of yourself on some stage of other, you can expect to see yourself here! They'd done a similar one for the 20th anniversary using clips from all the preceding years (embarrassingly including David Ogg's previous Targa mount, a Ferrari 365, down a bank at an angle of about 40o!), this tape also got a second showing. The highlight for me though was a ten minute ramble by a long-time competitor, ex-pat Northern Irishman, John Blake, who was hilarious recounting a few stories of past and present indiscretions, both his and other people's.

The other highlight was of course picking up our Targa Trophies, for hitting the times, whilst these had been achieved by quite a lot of crews, it seems that this is a pretty rare event for novices on this event, let alone complete novice Rallyistes, and it's just dawning on us what we have managed to achieve... We are chuffed to bits! A few people are certainly impressed, to the extent that we've been offered a fully prepared Holden Torana if we want to come back and run again but don't want to go to the expense of bringing a car down next time.

Would we come again ... Too right we would! Fantastic event, fantastic roads, lots of lovely people. Let's make no mistake though, it's a major undertaking to bring a car from Europe, both in terms of costs, and time to organise oneself and do battle with the bureaucrats... If I were to come again, I would definitely prepare the car more appropriately for an Endurance event over roads with some bumpy surfaces. We've had a lot of marvellous help whenever we needed it, for which we are very grateful, but I would definitely want some support crew next time, this of course would increase costs somewhat, but at the end of a long day it would be good not to have to wait in sweaty race suits to borrow someone else's tools etc. I would also pre-book fuel, just to relieve the stress of wondering whether you have enough fuel to run the stages and road sections before the next filling station hoves into view. I would definitely run with Pace Notes again, although I would not alter the philosophy of 'driving what I can see'.

Not sure when, but I'll be back ... Just need to work out whether to do Targa New Zealand, or Targa Newfoundland, or Classic Targa Adelaide before coming back to Tas!