TARGA NEW ZEALAND REPORT
THEY’ VE DONE IT! GLENN INKS TE RAND SPENCER WIN N, IN THEIR MITSUBISHI EVOVIII,H AVE WON THE ANNUAL MULTI - DAY TARGA NEW ZEALAND TARMAC MOTOR RALLY FOR A RECORDSETTING FIFTH CONSECUTIVE TIME
Prior to this year’s 24th annual multi-day event, which started in Invercargill on Tuesday, 23 October and finished in Queenstown on Saturday, 27 October, the record — five event wins but only four in consecutive years — was held by circuit-owning entrepreneur Tony Quinn.
A Queensland-based expat Scot, Quinn won his first Targa New Zealand event way back in 2003, driving a Porsche 996 turbo with Keith Wenn co-driving. In 2004, he and Wenn finished second to fellow Porsche pair Jim Richards and Barry Oliver. It was not until 2009 that the then owner of VIP Pet Foods really got into his stride, winning that year’s event — Auckland to Wellington — in what was to become the familiar jet-black VIP Pet Foods Nissan GTR-R35, this time with Adelaide-based co-driver Naomi Tillett reading the route book. Quinn and Tillett went on to win the next three years. However, pressure of work — associated, ironically, with opening his new circuit at Cromwell, Highlands Motorsport Park — saw Quinn reluctantly park the Nissan in 2013.
Dunedin pair Martin Dippie and Jona Grant stepped into the breach to win that year in their Porsche GT3 RS, but, from 2014’s 20th anniversary event — the first to be held in the South Island — it has been Glenn Inkster and Spencer Winn who have taken over the mantle of being the team to beat.
The duo found themselves playing second fiddle to fellow Andrewsimms.co.nz Allcomers class Mitsubishi Evo pair Haydn Mackenzie and co-driver Matty Sayers on the first day of this year’s lower South Island–based event. However, after sorting a turbo-manifold issue that slowed them at the start on the second day, the defending title-holders assumed a lead they were never to lose when Aucklander Mackenzie and his Hamilton-based co-driver Sayers crashed heavily south of Dunedin later that day.
As they have been in previous events, Inkster and Winn were particularly impressive in the wet and cold conditions that a southerly change brought with it on the third day, winning six of the seven stages and setting up a lead of over two minutes from local pair and Global Security
Production 4WD class leaders Martin Dippie and co-driver Greg Ball in the Porsche GT3 RS. Dippie and Ball remained a threat through Friday, only to cop time penalties of six-and-a-half minutes for exceeding a stage’s average speed. This effectively gifted the battle for the runner-up spot to Auckland pair David Rogers and Aidan Kelly in Rogers’ Andrewsimms.co.nz Allcomers Class 10 Mitsubishi Evo X, and Christchurch gravel rally specialist Marcus van Klink and his codriver, Matt Richards, in van Klink’s unique 20B turbocharged Mazda RX-8.
After elevating himself up the rankings with some spectacular tail-out driving on the wet roads of North Otago on Thursday, then edging past Rogers and Kelly on elapsed time on Friday, van Klink held the narrowest of advantages heading into the final day — just seven seconds. However, Rogers and Kelly were back in front after being quicker over the 23.68km climb over the Crown Range.
A determined Dippie and Ball were also able to dispatch the, by now hard-pressed, van Klink / Richards combination thanks to a quicker time through the event’s final stage at Highlands Motorsport Park. However, their time penalties meant that van Klink and Richards were able to retain third position, with Dippie and Ball fourth, and event regular Brian Green and his co-driver, Fleur Pedersen, from Palmerston North a standout fifth in Green’s locally developed, late-model Mitsubishi Evo–powered 4WD Mirage.
Green revelled in the conditions this year, and claimed a breakthrough stage win in
In one of the greatest whatmight-have-beens in the 24-year history of the New Zealand event, after a mammoth overnighter repairing the beaten-up Mitsubishi Evo X, Mackenzie returned on Thursday barely slower
the short, tight 7km Littles Road stage near Arthurs Point on the final day.
Tony Quinn, driving the latest Porsche GT3 R, was another event veteran to save his best till last, winning both stages at Highlands Motorsport Park by a comfortable but perhaps inevitable margin. Quinn and co-driver Kieran Anstis initially finished sixth overall, but that morphed into 11th when Quinn was penalized six-and-a-half minutes for exceeding predetermined speed averages.
As a result, Perth-based expat Robert Darrington and co-driver David Abetz moved up a spot to sixth, after a standout performance in Darrington’s E46 BMW M3 for the long-time event regulars.
Another BMW M3, albeit a later model, in the hands of event rookies Eddie Bell and Blair Forbes, came in seventh, with fellow Cantabrians Rory and his father Stewart Callaway eighth — and first Andrewsimms.co.nz Production 4WD class pair home — in the family’s Subaru Impreza WRX STI.
Making up the top 10 after an eventlong battle were HW Richardson Classic 2WD class winners — and another son/ father pairing — Mark and Chris KirkBurnnand from Wellington, and runners-up Derek Ayson and co-driver Gavin Mcdermott from Gore in gravel specialist Ayson’s Silver Fern Rally–winning Ford Escort MKII.
But what of Haydn Mackenzie and codriver Matty Sayers? In one of the greatest
what-might-have-beens in the 24-year history of the New Zealand event, after a mammoth overnighter repairing the beatenup Mitsubishi Evo X, Mackenzie returned on Thursday barely slower. With new co-driver Michael Goudie from Auckland alongside — Sayers having bruised some ribs in the accident — Mackenzie went on to win three of the five stages between Dunedin and Queenstown on the second-to-last day, then the iconic Crown Range stage on the final day, to complete a remarkable turnaround. In doing so, he set himself up as the driver most likely to challenge Glenn Inkster and Spencer Winn in the 25th anniversary event in October next year!