Targa Wrest Point, the latest tarmac rally to be hosted by Tasmania, Australia’s island state, kicks off this weekend, with a strong field of over 115 crews.
‘Wrest Point’ is a sister event to the legendary Targa Tasmania, and pre-event favourite is multiple Targa Tasmania winner Jim Richards. Richards is considered to be royalty in tarmac rallying circles, and his Porsche 911 GT2 will be difficult to beat.
But the man regarded by many motorsport commentators as being the biggest threat Richards is Dean Herridge, and Dean was up-beat about his chances at the pre-event press conference.
“I’m really enjoying it (ralling on tarmac). As Jim said, part of of the appeal of this event is the comradary and the different types of cars. What makes this event interesting is matching our Subaru to the Porsches and Lamborghinis, cars which we don’t compete against in the Asia-Pacific (Rally Championship). And there’s a wide variety of roads. Certain roads will suit some car and driver combinations, other stages with suit other cars. I think it’s going to be pretty exciting, with big position shuffles up and down the field for the whole weekend.”
So which stages does Dean favour? “I’m looking forward to ones Jim won’t win! Probably the bumpier, narrower roads will suit my driving and our car a little bit. Some of the bigger, more horespower, stages we’ll struggle on a little bit. But there’s a great variety and it will also make the event pretty interesting.”
Five separate categories will compete: Modern, Early Modern, Early Classic, Late Classic, and Showroom.
Along with Dean and Richards, veteran circuit racer Tony Quinn will pilot a brand new 2008 Nissan GTR, and local hopes will rest with Jason White in his Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera.
The first car leaves Wrest Point at 9.00 am on Saturday for the first of seven stages, with a further seven stages on Day 2.
Stay tuned to www.deanherridge.com for updates throughout the weekend.
Photos courtesy of sportcom.com.au/wrestpoint
The rally season has an early ‘kick-off’ this year for Dean, with a trip to Tasmania for Targa Wrest Point. The rally, which starts on Saturday the 31st of January, takes in two days of tarmac roads in the the south-east corner of Tasmania.
With Dean in the lead car, Graham Iddles and co-driver Paul Hopwood will join the Maxiumum Motorsport team in a second Impreza, two of only three 2008-spec Subarus to compete at the event.
Dean Herridge has completed the 2008 Chinese Rally Championship on fire. Literally!
“After leaving time control I checked the damage and reported it to the team, who asked if we could try and drive the car the 10km back to the service park. We made it most of the way, but 2km from service park the dragging tyre caught fire. We stopped to extinguish the fire and save the car from further damage. By the time we had it sorted it was too late to get back to service park to continue”.
Starting the 2008 Chinese season in a brand new 2008 model Subaru Impreza, Herridge and his SRTC crew worked hard throughout the year to develop the car, combining knowledge gleaned from international Subaru Group-N teams with the experience they’ve gained during five tough rounds of the CRC.
The weather has been cold, the spectator crowds huge, and the stages tricky and narrow. But Dean Herridge, Chris Murphy and the SRTC Subaru Impreza have survived some hairy moments to consolidate a podium position at the end of the first leg of Rally Shaowu.
“It was very cold this morning, and in some shaded areas in the mountain section there were still ice patches on the ground”, said Herridge. “We had quite a good run on the first stage; second quickest and just two-tenths behind Salo. But on the next we had a big moment at a forth gear tightening left-hander. I think most the top teams had the same problem, and that corner eventually claimed three of the local competitors. Later on that stage we under-steered off on the ice. We managed to reverse back onto the road, but lost some time”.
Behind the top four, the gaps are beginning to widen between the large field of Chinese drivers. After his main rival for the Chinese title crashed out, Cao Liu Dong was able to back-off during the afternoon stages. Making the finish line on Sunday afternoon will secure him the CRC title.
Dean Herridge and Chris Murphy have made a strong start to Rally Shaowu tonight, setting the third fastest time on stage one.
This weekend marks the final event of the Chinese Rally Championship for 2008, Rally Shaowu. The rally is all-new to the championship and is held in the Fujian Province, approximately 400kms inland from China’s eastern coast and almost half-way between Shanghai and Subaru Rally Team China’s base in Shenzen.
Using the forestry roads that run near Wuyi Mountain, competitors will be faced with 190kms of tough competitive stages. But conditons may be made even more difficult than normal. As is usual for CRC events, each leg will feature three runs over a limited number of stages, in this case two stages on Saturday and two on Sunday.
“It will be an interesting dynamic to be running behind the IRC cars”, said Herridge. “However it will not be so different to what we have experienced in the APRC and CRC before. It will mainly depend on the road surface and condition to how difficult the second and third passes of the stages will become. So until we see the stages for the first time on recce, this is an unknown quantity. However it will be great to have some of the leading European rally cars competing in China”.