26 October 2007

Dunlop Targa, Day 4: Windy roads and windy roads.

Today took us from Feilding to Hastings and from two extremes in both weather and roads.

We awoke to drizzle and the anticipation of greasy roads, starting with SS23. Named Windmill Alley, it's soon obvious why. Huge wind turbines dominate the hills above Ashurst and Woodville, and if the slippery roads and high winds weren't enough to test the concentration, the sight of the enormous blades slicing past you certainly made it difficult to concentrate on driving!

We took it easy due to the conditions, and discovered that the PV doesn't like high winds! The sidewinds made it hard to hold a line at speed and wiper blades soon became useless, flailing about in front of the windscreen intsted of across it!

But we made it, across open flowing roads and eventually on to the almost summer-like weather of the Hawkes Bay.

An ill-thought seeding order meant that we often started with much faster cars directly behind us, which would soon catch us over the long stages. It doesn't help the driving rhythm to be constantly checking mirrors looking for the faster car. I have to admit to being challenged by it though, and I'm proud to have held off and kept pace with faster cars by using the tight winding sections to our advantage. I think we did rather well against one car in particular with twice our horsepower and twice our no. of cylinders!

Had some minor technical issues creep up, including a missing exhuast bolt, which made us even louder than usual. Despite encouragement from onlookers that we should leave it that way, Allan and Hans fixed it in record time.

A pretty tough day, leaving one more to go! More kudos from locals who witnessed our antics over the tighter sections today is good inspiration for the last day tomorrow!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Good luck for the last day! I'm in Sweden at the moment, so let know if you need any parts! There is literally a whole carpark of old volvos just behind our place.
R

Unknown said...

All the best for tomorrow. L x

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