A Ferrari 308 in a ditch

The final day is from Strahan the Hobart and includes the famous Queenstown stage and the awesome 47km stage of Mount Arrowsmith. The day dawned to be wet and misty. I had planned on going up to Mt Arrowsmith if there was the chance of snow but it was not quite cold enough so I settled down on the famous twisty road heading up out of Queenstown. I knew it was damp but when a Daytona Coupe that was in the tour drove into a rock wall right in front of me I thought this could be interesting.

Sure enough there was lots of slipping and sliding but only 1 major incident with a BMW 2002TI which had it's front caved in. A lot of drivers tend to relax when they get above the bends and go a bit too hard and every year there are cars of the road in the last part of the stage but this year was the worst yet.

We had a Ferrari 308 in a ditch, a Porsche 944 on it's roof but the worst was Kevin weekes Lamborghini Gallardo. I was right behind the police sweep car and when I came on the scene I thought it was really bad. He had come down a fairly narrow piece of road with a left but slide sideways and would have gone from 200kph to zero in about 20 foot. It looked really bad and when they bought his wife and the chaplain down I thought the worst. Fortunately they build those Lambos tough. They had to cut the doors off to get Kevin and his navigator Rebecca out. They were both airlifted to hospital injured but not life threatening thank goodness.

So we finally arrived in Hobart for the ceremonial finish. Congratulations to Tony Quinn & Naomi Tillet on winning the modern class and overall in their monster Nissan GTR. I picked them to win on media day. I don't know but it seemed that the fast guys were all pushing harder than ever before. Very rarely do you see Jim Richards make a mistake let alone crash out. Kevin Weekes had his big off as well but Jason White in his Lamboghini Gallardo pushed Quinn hard all the way and finished second outright. Despite suffering flu early on Rex Broadbent won the late classic for the 3rd time.

As for the Mazdas Brendan & Rhianon finished third in the showroom class after being penalised for tyres and Steve & Bernie in the RX8 finished 10th outright which was an amazing result considering how new the car was and the technical issues like a gearbox with 2 gears. He was really quick when it ran properly and caught Warwick in his Porcshe GT3 halfway through Cethana. So enough of the cold and rain next weekend I am on the Sunshine Coast for the Asia Pacific Rally Championship stay tuned.