Well can you believe it’s mid-September already? I can’t but it is so that must mean team STILLEN are in Newfoundland prepping for Targa. The car spent today on the lifts / hoists having it’s suspension worked on. Steve was not happy with the ride height and softness settings on their GT-R’s Penske/STILLEN suspension so they’ve adjusted the height and stiffness and put the car back together for tech inspection.
Head over to STILLEN’s blog to check the video and other info from Kyle Millen who’ll be live-blogging from Newfoundland throughout the race.
Sunday’s leg is the Prologue so we shall see how the GT-R fares!
Update from Targa Newfoundland – Prologue leg: The car went well today and the team is satisfied with the pace, reaching 196km/h at one point. The prologue event does not count towards the Targa itself so Steve did not push it to the limit today.
Competitive racing begins tomorrow so stay tuned for Leg 1 of racing updates soon…
Zero to Sixty in 2.9 seconds with cornering and stopping performance to match sound like fun? Well thrashing the STILLEN GT-R targa car around Targa Newfoundland is going to be one hell of an experience.
The car is now completed including pre-race testing and tuning and is shipped out. Now it’s fully cooked the guys at STILLEN have photographed it and put a teaser video together.
Getting so close now, hit up the STILLEN blog for more details and pics…
An amazing result for the Nissan GT-R camp as Steve Jones and Ruari Souter-Dawson take the outright win for the 2009 Quit Targa West held over the weekend in Western Australia. Jones took the lead over rival Nissan GT-R pilot Tony Quinn during Leg 2 of racing and maintained it for the entire third day of racing. Quinn ended up finishing in second place overall for the event but was then excluded from the final results in post race inspection due to an exhaust “irregularity”.
In the Modern Challenge class, the GT-R also came away victorious as brothers Mark and Andrew Conacher beat out their next fastest competitor by over 3 and a half minutes.
Great work to all involved and again a great highlight that the GT-R is now the force to be reckoned with in the tarmac rally world.
In some truly abysmal weather for tarmac rallying, Steve Jones has managed to not only make up the 13 seconds he trailed competing Nissan GT-R driver Tony Quinn, but also put another 22 seconds on top by the end of day two’s racing.
Coming around some corners there were what seemed like rivers of water across the road and you had to concentrate just to keep the car on the road. It’s difficult but I’m having so much fun out there it’s just awesome.”
Steve Jones
Tony Quinn is still in second place however and leaves almost a full minute behind to third place Dean Herridge in a Subaru STi.
In the Modern Challenge class, the Nissan GT-R of Mark and Andrew Conacher leads by 1:19 to the nearest competitor. So each Nissan GT-R entered is in a top spot after day two.
After an exciting prologue event on Thursday, Steve Jones in his R35 Nissan GT-R got off to a great start in for Friday’s first competitive stage of the Quit Targa West 2009 in Western Australia. The prologue event consisted of two laps of the 3.4 km stage with Jones managing the best time in the LF Performance Nissan GT-R. Not far behind him in third place was Tony Quinn campaigning his VIP Petfoods Nissan GT-R entry.
Due to the reverse start order system this meant that Steve was last to start the first of seven stages for Leg 1 on Friday. After the third leg it looked like Jones was right on track to take a back to back win but in SS4 Tony Quinn in his GT-R was to snatch the lead and continue on to put 13 seconds distance between himself and Jones by the end of the day.
So the leadership goes from GT-R to GT-R at the end of Leg 1 on Friday. Reports of rain for Leg 2 on Saturday look like the GT-R’s AWD system might give the leaders an advantage indeed.
We’ll keep you updated but live results and updates can be found at the Quit Targa West website below.
