Targa Wrest Point - the countdown
Smashed windscreens, crashed cars, missing panels and ill-fitting wheels - ah, for a rally that did not start with drama!
The Behind The Drive team and Evo are awaiting the start of the Targa Wrest Point rally, or Targa Lite, is the warm-up for the Big One, Targa Tasmania. It uses the southern Hobart roads that used to be a part of the main event before th course changed several years ago, and they were so missed that Targa WP was created four years ago to bring them back into play and sate the locals and the drivers who missed them so.
But this rally, at which this writer and co-driver Claire have competed three of its four years, has always been a dramatic one.
The long haul from Sydney to the docks of Melbourne itself takes a day, then there is the overnight boat ride across the bass Strait to the top of Tasmania, before a final three-hour leg to the little island’s base in Hobart. It was in the latter, closing stages of the journey that the dramas began.
Our teammates have just purchased a beautiful Evo 9 rally car, and on the liaison down to Hobart, the windscreen was cracked. Swapping the Behind The Drive Evo 6 off the trailer and the Evo 9 onto it, we continued on our way, only to find two miles down the road that a fellow competitor had run out of fuel. Stopping to give them our only jerry can, we managed only 10 more miles before coming across a massive head-on accident involving members of the public only, though many competitors had stopped to render assistance by using their oil spill kits to mop up the escaping car fluids and clamping off fuel lines.
By the time we finally got to Hobart airport to collect codriver Claire, we were two hours behind schedule and missing a part of the car, the rear wheel flare, which had been lost somewhere along the way (another ‘fix it in Hobart’ part we had forgotten about before unloading and driving the car).
And on arrival, we discovered the brand new rims we had bought recently did not fit the car. While we had checked the clearance on the rear wheel for clearance under the flares, we had not thought to check the brake clearance at the front wheels. And nothing could be done or fixed, as it was Australia Day - one of our largest public holidays.
Sigh!
But with the crew flying in last night (Friday), tyres were swapped back to old rims, new windscreens were fitted, and the car is ready to go as I write this the morning of the rally.
It would not matter if we had six hours, six days or six months to prepare - it is always a last-minute rush, ensuring the adrenalin is rushing well before a key is even turned. And that’s why we love it. Or, at least that’s what we tell ourselves…












