The dictionary definition of "learn" is, "to acquire knowledge...as a result of experience". Unfortunately, it has recently become obvious to me that "learning" is not something that always occurs as a result of an experience. I say this because despite having experienced the fastest way to discard money that I yet know of - classic car rallying - I continue to indulge in this unfortunate behaviour. That's right, I once more agreed to go rallying with Dr Pat!
After showering ourselves with absolutely no glory at last year's Classic Adelaide rally, Pat and I decided that it was time to tackle the big one - Targa Tasmania. Targa is very different to Classic Adelaide - it is more competitive, pace notes are allowed, and the overall standings are determined by a handicap system that allows for engine capacity, age of the vehicle, and the extent of modification from standard. After careful perusal of the supp regs (all 80+ pages of them), Pat and I decided that a nice light car with a less than 1600cc twink, and of the advanced years of his Series 3 Elan, should be favoured by the handicap system, and may even end up with a decent overall result if driven well. Additionally, the rally is now run as a couple of separate competitions, so the classics (up to 1980) are not competing directly against the moderns, so we would not have to worry about knocking Jim Richards' Porsche 911 Turbo off the leader board. I understand that Jim breathed a deep sigh of relief when he heard that he wouldn't have to compete directly against Drs Patrick and Jason in their shabby old Elan...
This year's Targa was special - it was to run over a full six days (plus prologue), rather than the usual five. To prepare for this gruelling event we had many grand plans - sponsorship to alleviate the rather steep costs, an extensive practice and car testing schedule, a team of mechanics and support crew, a careful diet of protein and brain enhancing vitamins, and super-cunning race plans that ended with us standing on the podium covered in champagne and glory! For some strange reason however, we ended up doing what we always do - the car was prepared (if that's the right word...) with minutes to spare and absolutely no test mileage, we were sponsored by ourselves, and our crew consisted of Pat's friend Alex, who had foolishly agreed to the thankless task of towing the Lotus to Tasmania for us, and acting as dog's body when he arrived there.
At least Pat and I caught our flight this time...
We arrived in Tassie a week before the event actually began. Our cunning race plan was to recce the entire rally course (all 2200km of it, 30% of which comprised the 54 competitive "targa" stages) over this week. However, so as to not appear too serious, we would deny to all and sundry that extensive recce had actually taken place, and on the contrary paint ourselves out to be just "a couple of clowns", down in Tassie for a bit of a punt about! This would lower everyone's expectations of us - low expectations are much easier to achieve. Clever clever, we thought...
We had purchased a set of pace notes, so we hired a Hyundai Accent from the nearest unsuspecting rentacar dealership, and set off on our little adventure. Recce consists of driving each stage to check and annotate the pace notes, and to familiarise ourselves with the roads and any tricky areas. As navigator, the most important thing to remember is to take anti-vomit medication before you set out each day, as reading pace notes whilst lurching about in a dodgy Korean hatch on some of the best drivers' roads Australia has to offer will quickly make you bring up your nice B&B breakfast (if you don't take preventive measures). The remarkable thing about Tasmania in the week before Targa is how many white Hyundais and Corollas you see driving on little back roads, and they always seem to have one very earnest driver and one slightly nauseated passenger reading something in the front seat (and all at the posted speed limit too, officer!).
The week of recce passed, and we had covered over 4000km in the renter(!), stayed in three different towns, and seen the entire state (and much of it twice!). We had eaten more pies in more little English style Tassie towns than I care to recall, and occasionally we had even looked at some of the pretty scenery. Importantly, the Lotus arrived with Alex on the Sprit of Tasmania ferry, despite a booking stuff-up which prevented us from bringing the trailer over too. We figured this wouldn't be a problem - we would only need a trailer if we crashed, and only losers crash, don't they? We drove the Elan to our base in Launceston (a very nice Edwardian B&B), and did our last minute rally preparation - we washed it! Actually, it had developed a typically frustrating (and entirely new) Lotus type fault in transit - it would not turn off, even when the kill switch was turned off. An entertaining afternoon of fiddling with the alternator followed, after which the fault fixed itself as mysteriously as it had developed, never to occur again. But we carried 50 cents worth of electrical spare bits from Dick Smith throughout the entire rally, just in case it reared its ugly head again.
Scrutineering was held in the old rail yards in Launceston - somehow they managed to get through 300 cars in one day! We hooked up with some of the other Lotus entries - four Elises and a Series IV Seven. Fortunately none of us had any real problems with scrutineering, although initially Pat and I had problems with their accepting our eligibility for the class we had nominated. We protested vigorously, and ended up being the last car to leave scrutineering, and were late to book into parc ferme. Fortunately the powers that be saw our side of things eventually, and our class was changed in our favour by the beginning of Day One.
The drive to parc ferme revealed a new problem with the car - the front tyres were rubbing on the inner arch on full lock. The solution was to raise the ride height, but of course we did not have C-spanners. Fortunately parked next to the Elan in the Silverdome was Murray Coote in one of the factory MX-5s - he had actually built Patrick's suspension! Of course he had the right gear, so with much bashing and swearing we raised the ride height appropriately. This of course altered our wheel alignment, but we had to just put up with that (at least for the Prologue).
Day zero, the Prologue, arrived. Driving in loose convoy to Georgetown we were able to calibrate our trip computer, and arrived without incident. The Prologue is a quick sprint through the streets of Georgetown, and sets the start order for the rest of the rally, but does not count towards the overall results. The skies looked threatening, but the rain seemed to hold off - until we got in the car for our run... Of course, it poured buckets before and throughout our run, and then it stopped. The problem with a slow Prologue time is that you are likely to be seeded near slower cars for the rally, and may have more overtaking to do than you might otherwise have liked. However, at least we survived it! A number of cars went off, before their rally had even officially started.
On the way to parc ferme we had an hour or two for mechanical fettling, so we managed to find a place that would do a wheel alignment at 6.00pm! We had no idea which settings we really needed, so we just made some up and hoped for the best...
Day One of the rally looped to the north-west of Launceston - this would be a relatively easy day to get settled in to the swing of things. However, even at moderate rally speeds, it is amazing how quickly corners come up for the navigator! For anyone who thinks that navigating to pace notes is a doddle, think again - you certainly don't have time to relax! We made it to lunch without incident - the car was running beautifully, and we even seemed to have fluke the correct wheel alignment settings! A good sign of things to come came on about the third stage of the rally, when we came up behind and overtook a Series 4 RX-7 turbo, spitting flames from its pipes on every gear change. As the cars are started in thirty second intervals, this meant that we had already made thirty seconds up on it on that stage - this made us feel that we might even be posting competitive times!
The first long stage of the rally, the 16.2 km of Devonport, came up after lunch. About halfway through the stage is a long straight with an uphill kink at the end. We were at maximum revs (7500+ rpm) in top gear (about 210kph plus), when I looked up and saw a momentary darkness, like a blink. I shouted "What the Hell was that?", and without even easing off the throttle, Patrick yelled back, "Bonnet! Just keep going!!" At the end of the stage, we discovered that the chain holding down the front of the bonnet had snapped, and the bonnet had simply flown up over the windscreen, landing by the side of the road! There was nothing we could do about it, so we continued the rest of the day without a bonnet, looking like true rally legends! Shame we were really just a couple of clowns...
At the end of Day One, we found to our surprise that we were doing quite well - we were leading our class and category, and we were coming fourth outright in the Classic competition, behind a 911 RSR, a Datsun 240Z, and only a few seconds behind a 911 Carrera. We resolved to no longer just go for our Targa trophies, but rather to go all out for a podium finish, which now actually seemed achievable!
Unfortunately we were told by scrutineers that we would not be allowed to start the next day unless we had some sort of bonnet. To our dismay we heard that ours had been souvenired by some locals as soon as the Devonport stage was opened to the public. We appealed to the police for help, and sent out public SOS calls on the TV and radio news, and the next day in the paper. No bonnet was forthcoming however, so we checked the car out of parc ferme late in the evening, so we could do something (anything!!) about it in the morning.
Day Two, 7.00 am, two degrees in Launceston, and we were driving almost at random in an industrial area looking for a business that was open and might help us. As we drove past a sheet metal works, Patrick heard welding, so we beat on their door until someone came out. We explained our predicament, and before you could say "cheap labour", they had two men working on fabricating a new bonnet out of aluminium. Within an hour we had a new (and very lightweight!) ally bonnet, and all for the princely sum of $65.00!! We made it to check-in with time to spare, and went off racing!
Day Two takes the rally to the north-east passes of Tasmania. The Sideling, the first stage of the day, goes through temperate forest in the mountains - as we passed through clearings, we would see crowds of hundreds of people huddled around fires and cheering like mad in the near freezing conditions - it was just like the WRC!! The car ran like clockwork, and we started to get used to overtaking cars that had started before us on stages (that's a lot of fun!). At the end of the day we had not only held our fourth position outright, but had closed the gap to the 911 Carrera to only a couple of seconds.
Day Three passes once again to the north-west of Launceston, finishing in Burnie on the north-west coast, and passing through the best stages of the rally. In recce I was very excited by the Cethana stage - 38km of winding climbs to a plateau near Cradle Mountain, and then a killer descent. I was not disappointed during the rally. On the descent you become overwhelmed by the smell of not just your own brakes cooking, but also those of the car in front! Needless to say, this was Lotus country, and we lost no penalty time. Additionally one of the cars we had seen lying by the side of the road (usually as a result of brake failure) was the Datsun 240Z - we were in a podium position, possibly even second, as long as we finished!
Then came Rianna, notorious for its poor surface and numerous accidents. Four kilometres into the stage, we were overtaking a Honda Integra Type R over a crest (into the sun, with oil on the road, and loose wheel nuts, and any other excuse you can think of) when we had a misheard pace note call. The car overcooked it into a bend, and we slid into a banking. We managed to get it going again, but it was obvious that something was very much awry with the suspension, as we were driving almost sideways. We retired to a safe side road, and awaited a tow to get us to Burnie for repairs.
That evening in parc ferme there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as we reviewed the damage. We had broken a wheel, and cracked a fair amount of the body shell. More importantly, the rear upright was broken, and control arms on the left both front and rear were bent. Deciding that this was beyond our meagre resources to repair, both from the spares point of view, and from our lack of expertise point of view, we decided that we had to retire. Of course we had to find someone to blame, so we chose the Honda!
Now our lack of planning came back to haunt us - we had no trailer, and a Lotus that was not able to be driven. Fortunately Andrew and David Carra from Lotus Club Victoria had been sensible enough to not crash their Elise, and were kind enough to lend us their trailer. We towed the Elan back to Devonport, there to await the ferry back to Melbourne. Then we had three days of Targa to watch, this time as spectators.
Over the next three days we travelled to as many stages as we could and watched the progress of the rally. Of course, we continued to beat ourselves up over that single little mistake, especially when the 911 RSR dropped out ("we could have been first!!"). But we realised how lucky we really had been when we heard that Bill Pye and Steve Evans had had a multiple roll-over in their Elise on Day Five, and had been taken to hospital. At least we were uninjured. Other notables to retire in a spectacular fashion included Mick Doohan in the CLK55 AMG, which he wrote off on Day Four.
Ironically, our bonnet was eventually returned, and strangely was almost without a scratch. It is currently the best panel of the car! So at the gala finish of the rally at Westpoint Casino in Hobart, Patrick and I trotted across the finish line holding the bonnet and collected our finishers' medallions. We had to get something out of all of this!
The eventual winner of the Classic Competition was the 911 Carrera ("It could have been us!"), but notable Lotus results included John Anderson in his Lotus Seven, who won his class, and was awarded the trophy for the competitor who overcame the most adversity! John had to replace his engine, his front suspension (stripped from his own donor car and flown down overnight by the ever helpful Chris Beecham), and suffered assorted other failures, but kept on crawling back from the abyss to a well deserved finish. Greg and Gary Holland won a Targa Trophy in their Elise, and Andrew and David Carra won their class, and a Targa Trophy in their Elise (Thanks guys, for all your help with the trailer...). Next year we all intend to return, this time as a Lotus team (perhaps Team Tupperware?), and go through the whole thing again.
What! I'm returning? What about the whole "learning from your experiences" thing? Well, here are the things I have learnt from Targa 2001 :-
Targa Tasmania 2001 Lessons
1. Never, EVER buy an ex-rental car from Tasmania!
2. Like a good boy scout, one should "be prepared"
3. Make sure that you like pies, 'cos that's all you will eat for lunch for a fortnight.
4. Enunciate! Repeat after me, ENUNCIATE!
5. Pack a nice warm jacket, and a spare engine/transmission/chassis etc.
6. Sponsorship is good! (if you can get it...)
7. Never, EVER, EVER buy an ex-rental car from Tasmania! I mean it!