Day 12 Perth

The presentation for the John Giddens Memorial Trophy (for those doing the Australian section only) was held last night.  Pat Cole was the winner and Trevor Stilling made it to 2nd position with a good drive on the last day.  Gary Williamson might have held him off, but having been told the previous day that there would be two sections, not four, he elected not to bother with new tyres.  A bit unlucky but…

The plan to enjoy a sleep in this morning didn’t work all that well, both Mark and I woke up around 5:45 am.

Caught up with some friends for lunch (Ally and Dave Crabtree ex-Newcastle, as well as former colleague Danny Willmott) at a very nice restaurant.  

Had half a bottle of Chardonnay with lunch and I might get that extra bit of sleep now.  

Bus goes to the airport at 8:30 PM tonight.

*****

Getting ready to fly the cars to Istanbul .....








Some of the cars getting directed into Customs for the pre-flight checks:

The Connolly Porsche and the Z of the Czech crew

The Silling/Travis Stanza, and the Olholm/Doble Z 

Photos: Thanks to Ally Prummel Crabtreee

Day 11 York to Perth

Today's action (Alan Vaughan photos):

Start of today's second stage, Boddington 1

No typing in the car today.  

Today was full on.  Started at 6am and transported 160km to Boddington. From there, there were two stages which had to be done twice.  They were stages I remembered from Rally Australias all those year ago.  The last one finished with the Bunnings jumps.

We didn’t do too well.  The car handled dreadfully using the tarmac setup on the gravel. Add to that we missed a couple of turns that cost time as well.  Talking to other people afterwards, it seems we weren’t the only ones to do this .

There was added pressure to get the cars to the airport by 4pm at latest and at the last two stages, they were booking people in at nominated times then starting them at an earlier time to gain on the schedule.

We had time to put on some tarmac tyres and replace the air cleaners and that was all. I believe the plane doesn’t go until tomorrow but customs need 24hrs for something.

How did we do today?  I don’t know.  We may have held 2^nd spot but I can't be sure until I see some results.

There is a presentation tonight for the Australian section which I believe Pat and Bradley Cole (right) will win in their Mercedes.

We are looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow, before the flight to Ankara in the evening.



(later): results posted for the end of the Australian stage:

Day 10 Kalgoorlie to York

I’m typing in the car again. It’s a 572km transport from this morning’s stage near Kalgoorlie to York.

We are still holding down 2^nd place.

This morning was supposed to be 150km transport then a 105km horror stage! It was shortened to just 58km by cutting out the first part of the stage.  Sadly we had already fuelled the car for the longer distance so carried a small weight penalty.  We also let Geoff Olholm and Ondrej Cofal go in front of us as it seemed likely they would catch us on a 105km stage.

The stage was very sandy and windy through scrub land. A lot of hard work for Mark.  I thought it was a good stage but I’m not sure Mark did. Ondrej Cofal was off in the stage with a wheel sitting beside the car.  The Callinans were also off.  Not sure what their issue was. Could have been a flat or could have been beached on the sand bank at the edge of the road.  Neither car came in while we were at the service area at the end.

There was a competitor briefing last night where we were told that cars must be at a Perth airport at 3:30pm tomorrow or they won't be on the flight to Turkey.  To help with this, the organisers are dropping the last two stages for tomorrow and competitors can then take their cars straight to the airport.  This is a problem for us, as we wanted time for the service crew to change the suspension for the European tarmac sections and to fit tarmac tyres. 

What we are contemplating is to change to tarmac setup tonight and to run the two gravel stages tomorrow with the tarmac springs and wheel alignment.  Hopefully this won't cost us too much time. 

Stop press!!!: News on arriving at York.  The organisers now plan to start an hour earlier and run all four stages tomorrow.  There will be even less time to get to the airport.  We are now faced with making arrangements to get the tarmac tyres sent somewhere we can get them.  We'll see what happens!

York has really turned out for the rally.  Hundreds of people, main street closed for rally cars and service crews.

Day 9 Border Village to Kalgoorlie

 I’m typing in the car on the 377 Km transport to Kalgoorlie - plenty of time to write....

leaving Border Village at sunri

Today didn’t go so well. With a 6:30 am start, we were up early as we stayed at Border Village and had to drive down to Eucla.  We left in the dark with just 5km to the first  stage of the day.  The sun rose while we were waiting at the first control.

The stage called “Old Coach Road” was 80km long and had everything.  Some good road but also a lot of grotty tracks with sharp rocks and ruts. Somewhere in there we must have hit something hard enough to rearrange the wheel alignment and the car became more difficult to drive.

Fortunately we have a good service crew in Stewart, Jamie, Will and Logan who realigned front and rear and sent us on the way on 453km of transport. 

These guys take the car from us when we get to night stops and deliver it back to us in pristime condition (sometimes we are already asleep when this happens).

Following the transport, there was a short 14km stage which we didn’t do all that well, struggling to find a road shown in the tulip that we didn’t see.

Bottom line, we probably lost 4:30 or so today that we shouldn’t have and young Ondrej Cofal will likely threaten our current 2^nd place tomorrow. Ondrej on his first rally is getting better and better. He now sometimes takes time off Joost’s Porsche.

I’m not exactly sure how many service crew there are on the event.  Geoff Olholm has a couple of guys (Gary Kirk and Bob Duck) who seem to be everywhere.  Their service vehicle wins the prize as the best presented.  Painted in the same colors as the rally car it looks good.  Gary and Bob have helped us out in other events.  (We would not have survived Day 1 of the Red Centre to Gold Coast rally  in 2008 without their help).

Pat Cole, who is doing only the Australian leg is winning that fairly easily. He would be in 4^th spot outright if he was included.  Pat has seven people in his service crew.  He also had an aeroplane chasing him for a few days.

Pat and Bradley Cole in their Mercedes, and the Czech crew of Ondrej Coufal (right) and Jiri Kotek  in their Datsun

(NB - the Cole photo is from the Classic Outback Rally Facebook page).

The Czech service crew are also interesting. They have no English but boundless enthusiasm and seem to always be rushing somewhere.  That said, I think they are travelling a little slower after an officer spoke to them the other day.  (Our Belgian friends Joost and Jacques were also spoken to for doing 71 in a 60 zone).

Other things I could write about are: the organisers, my experience with the HANS device, the looming difficulty of getting the car up to tarmac spec for Europe, and meeting the deadline for loading on the plane, but I’ll do that sometime in the next couple of days....

Day 8 Port Augusta to Border Village (SA/WA)

No Optus at Border Village and Telstra is dodgy.  I've invested $5 at this satellite kiosk thing and who knows, it might even work.

A long, long transport stage, on the Eyre Highway (photo from Alan Vaughan)

Lots of transport today.  Total Kms = 1002 but the special stages were 93km and 26km.

Mark absolutely loved the 93km stage, describing it as the longest and fastest  he has ever done.  Our average speed was 119.4kph and our max speed was 196kph.  On the  rev limiter for quite a while. 
(On Facebook, Mark wrote: "Scared 2 emus and 2 kangaroos plus me" )

There was another 500km of transport to the last stage on the Nullabor which was a track through the grass.  Very hard to see but running off the road didn't seem to matter much as there wasn't much to hit.

During the transport stage, we had time to stop and look at the cliffs on the Great Australian Bight.

Car is good.  Mark is driving well.  Service guys are looking after us well.

Result wise, gaps are increasing. Geoff's (Olhom) lead is increasing. We are increasing the gap to Ondrej (Coufal) .  

A pair of Zs.

Z cars are 1,2,3 at the moment.  Keith Callinan (KC) is doing some brilliant times in the Escort, as is Joost (Van Cauwenberge) in the Porsche, but they will have their work cut out for them unless the front runners have issues.

Day 7 The Flinders Ranges

Mark likes the Flinders Ranges!  He says he will come back for a visit.  You must be looking forward to that, Anne?!

Bunyeroo Gorge

Moralana Gorge

But yes, they are spectacular and the rally roads were good too. There were three stages, Bunyeroo Gorge, Moralana Gorge and then a property stage called Kanyaka.

Working on the Z car

Bunyeroo was 40km and I believe Geoff Olholm took more than a minute back from us.  He seems to have upped his pace a notch. 

I believe he is running with less fuel, only one spare and has tweaked the engine for another 500 rpm.

Moralana Gorge, the second stage, is a magic piece of road - Joost was quickest, Callinans second,^, Geoff Olholm 3^rd and he took another 4 seconds off us.  We did get a little of it back on Kanyaka where we were 30 seconds quicker.

On the transport after Moralana, we were following Keith Callinan’s Escort. We were fiddling with headsets and not being particularly vigilant when Keith slowed quickly for some emus running onto the road.  We were lucky not to run into the back of him.

Lunch time found us at the Parachilna Pub where they have 'roo, goat, emu and camel on the menu. I didn’t have any.

Wearing the fly nets

I should mention flies.  There are millions of them.  Only Mark and I had fly nets on Day 2 (see photo) but more people have then now. Joost bought all they had on sale in Renmark.

We cross the Nullabor tomorrow.  Two stages scheduled, 93km and 24km and lots of transport.





Latest results are:

Day 6 Barossa to Port Augusta

Had a great day’s rallying today.  The roads used here in South Australia are mainly shire roads and are wide and smooth.  Stage lengths today were 27, 9, 71 and 23km.  

Turbine Row stage

The 9.1km section was called Turbine Row because it’s the access road to an AGL wind farm and there are dozens of huge wind turbines along the ridge.
AGL provided lunch, drinks and other goodies as a promotion at the nearby village of Mount Bryan.
The stage itself climbed a ridge line then ran along the ridge line with the wind turbines, before  descending to the village of Mount Bryan.  
It featured  steep ascents and descents, blind crests and many off camber corners, so everyone was being very cautious.  
I didn’t actually talk to anyone who really loved it.

Not so the other stages - they were a blast.  Nothing much to worry, about just “go for it” type roads. The 77km stage saw the Callinan Escort  fastest, with Joost’s Porsch second,  Geoff Olholm third and us fourth.

The Escort of Keith and Mary Anne Callinan at the start
of the Turbine Row stage. (Photos by Alan Vaughan).

Geoff Olholm is stretching his lead on us, while Ondrej Coufal (the Czech in the 240Z) lost time to us today.  Joost is nearly always quickest and may claw back the time he has lost when he was bogged two days ago.  The Callinans are occasionally taking fastest time but they are a long way back.  They had more trouble today on the first stage and we actually passed them in the stage.

Today’s biggest problem was that one of our service vehicles, the Transit van, broke down at the start of the day. The engine stopped and wouldn’t restart.  They had it towed to a Ford dealer who diagnosed its problem as terminal.  They then set about hiring another van which had to come from Adelaide.  Hopefully Jamie and Logan will get here tonight.

Mike Cotter/David Stevens had trouble with a broken gearbox last night.  They were able to get another gearbox from Gary Kirk (one of Geoff Olholms’s service crew ) who lives nearby.  Tonight, that gearbox is leaking oil from the front oil seal and the service boys will likely have a late night again.

We get to stay two nights in Port Augusta.  Woo-hoo

We do three stages in the Flinders Ranges tomorrow.  So that should be good.