Motorsport: Quinn followed own advice

Tony Quinn and Naomi Tillett (Nissan GT-R35) defended their 2010 Targa New Zealand title with another impressive overall win in this year's event. Photo / Ground-Sky

Australian Tony Quinn continues to impose his formidable rallying skills on New Zealand roads, winning his third straight Targa New Zealand event.

Quinn and co-driver Naomi Tillett, in their Nissan GT-R35, finished the five-day race - which ended in Hawke's Bay over the weekend - ahead of Glen Inkster and his co-driving boss, Spencer Winn, with Glenn Smith and Andy Lowe third, and expat Kiwi Steve Millen and his Canadian co-driver, Jen Horsey, fourth.

The win is the pair's third in as many years in the annual event and marks them as one of the most successful pairings in its 17-year history. "One of the things I've learnt over the years is that to win this event you need to get in front early and stay there," said Quinn.

"That's something I learned from Jim Richards when he was winning everything and I was finishing second or third or whatever and it's advice I'm happy to share with whoever wants to listen.

"Glenn [Inkster] was trying hard but I knew by lunchtime it would take a miracle - or a decent accident - for us to lose it."

Inkster knows what it's like to follow Quinn's tail lights across the finishing line, having been in the same position last year on his debut in Targa New Zealand. Part of the problem is it wasn't until the third stage on the opening day of the rally that Inkster managed to get on top of the time sheets and he had to play catch-up from then onwards.

"The plan this year was to win the first stage and keep winning stages because, as Tony says, if you win the first one by, say, two seconds, all you have to do is match everyone else's times from that point on and you will win the event by two seconds," said Inkster.

"I knew that unless something happened to Tony and Naomi we weren't going to win. But there was no way I was going to back off. For one thing, I still wanted to win as many stages as I could and, for another, I didn't want to get to the end and find that something had happened to Tony and Naomi but I hadn't done enough to bridge the gap."

Behind Quinn and Inkster, Smith and Harry Dodson spent the final day disputing third place. However, it was the consistent Millen who split the battling Smith and Dodson duo with Brent Early and Andy Oakley fighting back from a rollover on day two to finish sixth in their ex-Targa New Zealand winning Nissan Skyline R34 coupe.

Defending champion Quinn made the most of the opening gambit of the 2011 Targa Rally by taking the first stage win to set the story for the rest of the race. Not wanting to be left too far behind, Inkster won the Woodcocks, Kaiwaka and Doctors Hill stages from Quinn and Proctor.

Quinn had slipped back to fifth by now but stormed back to win the sixth stage to lead the race from Inkster at the end of day one.

With most drivers now well and truly into the groove of tarmac rallying, Quinn was about to have a battle on his hands. Smith joined the fray for the lead as Quinn and Inkster swapped stage wins.

Smith wasn't out of the picture, winning the first and fifth stages outright and finishing no lower than fourth in the other four.

Heading into the final publicity stage at Springhill Farm just south of Wellsford, Quinn led by 24 seconds from Inkster, with Smith just 10 seconds further back in third, having displaced Clark Proctor and Tony Callaghan and Subaru Impreza driving Targa Rotorua winner Leigh Hopper and Shaun Bawden.

Day three saw Quinn continue to set the pace, but all eyes were on Inkster and Proctor. Quinn won the first two stages in the northern Waikato but Inkster won the third and Proctor won the fourth and the fifth on the way back east.

Inkster was lucky to get away with a high-speed wall-of-death ride up and along a bank in the fifth stage and, after replacing a damaged radiator, bounced back to win the sixth stage and finish second to Quinn in the seventh.

Notable by his absence was Targa Rotorua winner Hopper in the Subaru WRX. He was in the hunt for overall honours in Northland but crashed out of the event in spectacular style near the end of the Oparure stage late on day three.

With his third consecutive (and fourth overall) Targa New Zealand title in the bag, Quinn has returned to Australia to contest the Targa High Country event in Victoria next weekend, debuting the latest model Nissan Skyline GT-R35.

Just over 130 cars started this year's Targa New Zealand event, with more than 75 per cent finishing.