Author: Liam

This year marked my second trip to Targa Tasmania, so it was with some experience that I knew the excitement and anticipation of seeing the entire fleet of competition cars at Launceston prior to the event, would soon end in a twisted wreckage for some. Symbolising the loss of someone’s hopes and dreams. Motorsport is an unforgiving beast, as these images show.

It doesn’t matter how much your car costs, by entering an event like Targa Tasmania you simply have to be prepared for the worst to happen.

The problem with that is being witness to some gorgeous metal being pushed into shapes we hoped never existed. Take the stunning Lotus Cortina, for example. Or the beautiful yellow BMW 2002. Which, incidentally, crashed out in 2008 as well—on the first corner of the Prologue in George Town—poor buggers.

The Ferrari featured below, amazingly, suffered only cosmetic damage, as severe as it may have looked, and the car was seen on the road after the event being driven back to Devonport for the ferry ride home.

The profile of driver, too, was no barrier, with eight-time winner Jim Richards crashing his car in a Targa Tasmania rally for the first time. Suitably, Richards’ candid self-appraisal was refreshing to hear.

“I turned into the corner in second gear, got to the middle of the corner and the car understeered on the gravel and mud that was on the road. But hey, 200 other cars got around the corner without hitting the bank so I was obviously going a fraction too fast,” he said.

Some raw TV news footage from the final day can also been seen below, which includes the sorry sight of Kevin Weeks’ Lambo in the bushes.

Fortunately, for all the twisted metal, no competitors suffered serious injuries during the event.

Eagle eyed AUSmotive readers will notice a MINI Cooper S shown in the images below. You’ll be able to read more on that later when my service crew report for 2009 is posted in the coming days.

Service crew duties meant I wasn’t able to get the camera out during Leg 3, so the next suite of images are from the ‘Mt Black’ stage from Leg 4. This is when the rally heads down the west coast, leaving the Launceston base for an overnight stop in the picturesque village of Strahan.

While there was some early rain about on the previous day, it cleared up pretty early in the morning. Not so on day four, where the rain came and went throughout the day. For an example of this, just check the difference in conditions on the pics below of car #803, the red R32 Nissan GT-R. The two photos were taken a bit over 30 seconds apart.

The photos were captured at the start of the stage and in a few of the shots you can get a real appreciation for the support and volunteers needed to run an event such as Targa Tasmania. It must be a logistical nightmare coordinating all the people involved, and that’s before you even worry about the competitors!

Quickest on the 8.8km ‘Mt Black’ stage was Kevin Weeks in his 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, with a time of 4 minutes 19 seconds. If I was to hazard a guess, I would think a BMW X5, towing an empty car trailer, should be able to cover the stage in a shade over 7 minutes and 40 seconds.

You know the drill, more pics and TV news highlights after the jump. If you have been following this series of posts, the Leg 3 news clip has been included as well.

These photos were taken on Leg 2 at the ‘Longford’ town stage. The 2.9km zig-zag street circuit gives spectators a chance to see the cars in action without the need to beat road closures.

The town stages at Targa Tasmania have generous base times. This means the bulk of the field will usually ‘clean’ the stage and incur no time penalties. This was the case for ‘Longford’ as the results show, but a pattern was starting to emerge on the leaderboard with Tony Quinn and Kevin Weeks heading the pack.

As with the previous image galleries, more pics can be seen after the jump. Don’t forget to click on each pic to load the 2000px super image. A brief video clip of the day’s proceedings is also included.

This selection of photos was taken on day one at the ‘Merseylea’ stage, a 9.9km stretch south of Devonport. The fastest through this stage was Jason White in his 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo, but it was the Lambo of Kevin Weeks that stole the show with flames spewing out of the exhaust throughout the corner where these pics were taken.

A full list of results for the ‘Merseylea’ stage can be seen here. For more pictures and television news highlights from Leg 1, see below.

The first hit out for Targa Tasmania competitors is the ‘Temco Prologue’, held on the streets of George Town. The stage itself doesn’t count towards the final placings, but effectively seeds the drivers by determining the starting order for the rest of the event.

In order to help compress the field during the rally, thereby minimising road closure times, the slower competitors—as determined by the Prologue results—begin each day first, with the field gaining pace as the next driver starts. Occassionally re-seeding does take place, as it did this year when Steve Glenney’s RX-8 SP blew a turbo on the George Town leg. The Mazda techs had his car ship shape for Leg 1 the following day and so the organisers moved his starting order up the field reducing the likelihood of Glenney overtaking slower cars all the time.

On arrival of the fleet in George Town the cars gather in a park giving spectators a chance to get up close and personal with all the cars and drivers before they hit the streets in anger.

After the jump you can see plenty of photos (click each image to load a 2000px super image). I’ll be posting up a few image galleries from the event and aim to give a good cross section of the cars taking part, from the old classics to the latest supercars.

Also included below is a YouTube clip from this year’s Prologue filmed inside car #715, a 1970s Porsche 911. This footage not only shows you the streets of George Town, but also gives a good example of the pace note system used by many of the teams. Rounding out the photo gallery is another YouTube clip showing some raw footage of the cars in action. Keep an eye, and ear, out for the fire spitting out of Jason White’s Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera!