Rally Tasmania

14^th-16^th February 2003

Report by Will Gordon

After 14 months in the making, Phil Showers at Northern BM delivered our completed Avus blue BMW E30 325i Rally Car.  With a month to spare, we tested the car on the weekends using any road in Victoria that showed a squiggle in the Melways, with the Black Spur and Lake Mountain our favorites.  After ironing out the minor glitches we were ready to fly to Tassie.  The car went over rather cheaply with one of the rally’s major sponsors, Toll shipping.  On arrival in Tasmania we jumped in to our rented commodore, shared with Phil Showers, his co-driver Aneeta Abzatz and our service guy Michael.  Our first stop to pick up the rally cars and Phil’s truck which had come along for the ride, just in case one of the drivers got at little over eager and the cars couldn’t make it home under their own steam.  After collecting the cars, a final inspections showed some scratches on the side mirror of the new rally car, compliments of the Toll precision driving team (not so cheap after all). 

In 2002 Andrew and I made our debut in Rally Tasmania driving Andrews 355 F1 Ferrari. We participated in the parade section that preceded the rally along with 12 other Ferraris.  We had a great time and found it to be the best introduction to tarmac rally you could get, with the combination of closed roads, unlimited speeds, course notes (as opposed to the more elaborate pace notes), no helmets or times recorded.  It was during this time that Andrew first muttered to me how much fun it would be to come back and compete in a real rally car (Ferraris are good, but not so good on Tassie roads as we discovered when we bottomed out numerous times), and as we all know Ferraris cost a bit more than the average car when you bend one.  So there we were 1 year later in a purpose built BMW rally car.  Love your work Andrew!

This year there were 140 entries of which 68 were modern (1982 onwards).  We were seeded 61^st with Phil Showers 60^th, and Tony Moodie sharing the driving with his son James 56^th in another E30.  Over the 3 days we would travel a total distance of 730km including 157km of closed sections broken up into 16 stages.  The most exciting stages were Hellyer Gorge and its reverse, as well as the grueling 26km run into Savage River.  On this stage we encountered 7 cars that had stopped abruptly for one reason or another, including one car that had landed on top of another.

The final results were: Andrew & Will Gordon                   31st and   1st in class Phil Showers & Aneeta Abzatz    39th and  2nd in class Tony & James Moodie                    4th and  3rd  in class The 7 cars we beat between our car and Phil's BMW were: Porsche 944 Turbo Porsche 928 S Suburu Impreza WRX RA Toyota Celica GT4 Honda Integra Type R Holden Commodore V8 Suburu WRX STi

Apart from the simple fact of driver and navigator sheer brilliance, the reason we did as well as we did was largely due to the pace notes we were using and Phil & Tony weren’t.  Pace notes are great, they tell you exactly what corners are coming up, how sharp they are, what’s on the other side of the crest, whether a corner tightens or opens, etc. When you are racing in under powered cars (as opposed to the 400hp 4WD Turbo Porsche of Jim Richards who won the event), its very important to keep accelerating over blind crests and corners if the pace notes say it is safe to do so.  Not only can you make valuable seconds on each corner, this is also where the biggest adrenalin rushes come from!  Pace notes are great but to any budding navigators out there thinking of giving them a go, what ever you do “Don’t lose your place in the notes” if you do, for heaven's sake, tell your driver as soon as you think something is wrong.  It’s better to go around a few corners blind than to send your car off a crest you kind of think goes straight when in actual fact it goes hard right, hence the 7 cars off on Savage River.

Overall Andrew and I enjoyed Rally Tasmania 2003 even more than 2002 because of the added competitiveness as well as the pace notes giving me something more to do other than sit and wave at the spectators.

The car ran faultlessly over the entire weekend.  With one more wave of Phil’s magic wand (and a replaced side mirror) it will be ready and rearing to go to Targa Tasmania in May 2003.

I can’t wait.