This year's inaugural Targa High Country was run on the 5th-7th of November. Ray ran with with Kym Illman in the Messages on Hold EVO IX. The car was prepared by the team at TMR in Melbourne to Modern Category specification. Targa High Country is a new event, a concept though up by the team at Octagon and based out of Mt Buller in the Victorian High Country. Day 1, the Friday was a short day with things like documentation and a drivers briefing to complete before getting underway with a blast through the streets of Mansfield followed by street party with all the cars present. This was a good chance to iron out any cobwebs and see how Kym and Ray worked together.

Day 2 was right into it with a timed stage down the bottom half of Mt Buller, this has an easily acheivable base time, then off to the Mansfield-Whitfiled road for 3 fast and technical stages. There were some quite big drops on a couple of these stages, no room for error at all. After these stages we headed to Wangaratta for a lunch break and service then off to do the previous 3 stages in reverse. Was quite a crowd at the lunch break and was great to see so many locals out there. The last stage of the day was the famous Mt Buller climb, 16km with about 100 corners, haven't counted them all though:). Finished the day 25th in Modern and only a few seconds off Paul Summers in the potent Viper.

Day 3 technical and long stages in a loop out to Eildon via Jameson. Very tough stages these with not much between calls, just talking at a 110% the whole way. We managed to pick up some time during the day and finished 22nd in Modern. Had a bit of a scare on the transport heading to the last stage, a blow out on the front right tyre, but no damage to the car.

Was glad to be in the first ever running of the Targa High Country and enjoyed the run with Kym. You can check out some of the incar here.

Ray