Targa High Country 2017 - Day 1

Craig was unable to sit at home and hear about the antics of the 2017 Targa High Country rally being run without his presence, so the Mustang Motorsport team dusted the cobwebs off the 2013 Shelby GT500 and Craig went looking for a last minute navigator who would be able to fill some big shoes. A call to Smoothline’s Bernie Web was made in the hunt for a navigator who fits the bill and, sifting through the list, Anthony Carr became the obvious choice.

As you could imagine, Day One of THC proved to be a challenge for the Mustang Motorsport race team. Anthony Carr is a young navigator with a little experience rallying, and he stepped up and was thrown into the deep end. The team had made some improvements to the tough-looking Shelby without testing, and Craig found the dynamics of the new Shelby GT and the old faithful GT500 are so different. Stepping back into the blue beast Craig said, “I don’t know how I drove this thing fast. It takes pure concentration and planning to execute every corner however, once settled and familiar it is quite fun.

In the morning the first stages were the time to settle in as a new team combination - car, driver, navigator. As we progressed we were making adjustments to the Shelby, and we were making surprisingly good times and had many comments by others at the lunch break. We were in equal second place with three other competitors in GT2. After lunch it was time to knuckle down and see where the new team could place, with Craig’s favourite Galls Gap stage. Anthony also said that was the highlight, reaching speeds of 260kph on the open road. The last stage of the day was Mt Buller - up hill, 18km of hill climb to the top - and the Shelby pulled like a train all the way to the finish. Up the top on the left turn we decided to put on a drift with some smoke for the crowd, finishing for the day in second outright in the GT2 competition and fourth outright overall, a great effort for a new team - well done Anthony!

Here is how you can keep up with all the latest results, as well as a bunch of images from the day (a big thank you to Angryman for the always-great action shots), along with some adjustments made as we progressed through the day...