He always lit up his tyres!

There’s a new kid on the block in the world of tarmac rallying and he’s giving everyone a serious run for their money. Danish driver Alan Simonson today won the 2007 Rally Tasmania to back up his recent victory at Lake Mountain. He must seriously fancy his chances when Targa comes around.

Held over 3 days in the beautiful countryside of Tasmania’s northwest, Rally Tasmania had a field of over 100 cars divided into modern & heritage categories. This year we had sensational weather conditions, sun, sun and more sun with temperatures of 30c. Obviously a lot of the drivers thought this was their chance to make record times in what were unusually dry conditions through stages like the spectacular Hellyer Gorge and Savage River. Some of them certainly did like Jason White in his Lamborghini Gallardo who was unbelievably quick through Hellyer but there was a lot of carnage with some drivers trying just too hard all weekend.

Simonsen certainly didn’t have things all his own way as we had a very competitive field that included current Asia-pacific rally champion Cody Crocker, multiple Targa and Bathurst winner Jim Richards, Targa winner Jason White, ex V8 supercar driver Tony Longhurst and young APRC rally driver Eli Evans.

At the end after 600km’s and 165km’s of competitive stages Alan beat Cody by just 15 seconds closely followed by Jason who was 45 seconds behind. In the heritage rally Stephen & Jeff Hoinville were victorious in their Ford Escort RS 1600 just ahead of Daniel and Tim Callinan in there 1979 HRT Commodore. That the Callinan’s actually managed to finish was a big surprise as whenever he saw me shooting at the side of the road he always lit up his tyres. Great stuff mate!

I would be very interested to know David Waldon’s times through some of the stages. Dave is the current Tas rally champ and was driving the fast recovery vehicle which certainly seemed to live up to the fast bit of it’s name even though it was a Toyota Landcruiser! He appeared to go through some of the corners faster than some of the competitors and I would not have been surprised if he caught the Porsche he was bearing down on by the end of the Fernglade stage.

Update. I just received an email from Dave and this is what it said - "Yes, I did catch the Porsche, three times (twice in 1 stage). Three tonnes of Landcruiser presents new and unusual handling / braking scenarios! Spotted you at the bridge, but you were too far in to hit, next time maybe!!"
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