The MultiVital Clubman takes on Targa Tasmania 2000
Day 2
Through the Longford stage at the end of Day 1
As is often the case, luck or lack of it, can change things dramatically. Day two went well until the last stage before lunch when our intercom decided to cease transmission. This necessitated navigator John Allen to use the more basic method of communication; hand signals. Things were to get worse.
Navigator John Allen and
Driver Ray Vandersee – before we knew what lay ahead!
Sheffield, a stage on which I was looking forward to using my new brakes to advantage, became a nightmare when the MultiVital car gradually ground to a halt due to fuel starvation – despite a full tank. After checking the pump, fuse, relay etc., the car restarted and ran roughly to the end of the stage. Due to no mobile phone contact, we had to splutter through another two stages prior to seeing our service crew who promptly changed the fuel filter that was blocked by a mysterious substance. These unfortunate events cost us approximately 20 minutes in penalty time and any chance of a top outright placing. We dropped from eighth to seventy-seventh outright in the space of three stages.
Lifting a wheel on the picturesque High Plains stage.
Time to reassess our goals and refocus. Some other competitors who purchased fuel from event sponsor Mobil also ran into fuel filter blockage problems. The organisers weren’t interested though so time to soldier on and make the best of our situation. But this meant we had to forget about the possibility of a top ten outright place and concentrate on winning the clubman category. We were running the only Westfield in the event. Lucalia, Caterham, PRB, Amaroo and the latest Elfin Type 3 made up the rest of the field. We were currently about 17 minutes behind the category leader, which meant we needed to make up an average of 4 minutes and fifteen second on each day of the remaining four days of competition. No easy task!