Husband and wife team, Alastair & Martine Walker, are the second crew to be inducted into the Tarmac Magazine scholarship program for the 2010 Targa Tasmania event in late April. Editor of Tarmac Magazine, Dean Evans, contacted the team yesterday with the good news before making the announcement at the magazine offices in Sydney.
The Walker Motorsport pair will be entered in the Modern category driving their 2003 Volkswagen Mk IV R32. The 3.2-litre V6-powered all wheel drive R32 is one of only 200 cars released to Australia by Volkswagen as a limited edition run in early 2004 to mark the end of the Mk IV model Golf.
The team will compete against iconic Australian drivers such as Jim Richards, Tony Quinn, Kevin Weeks and Jason White to name a few and the duo are under no illusions of the huge task ahead of them.
When asked about their goals for the event, Alastair said: “It’s an honour for us to be chosen by Tarmac Magazine for such a prestigious event and we can’t thank them enough for the scholarship and their support and encouragement with all our preparations.”
“I’m really looking forward to driving some of the best tarmac stages in the world and we’ll be using the time after Targa Wrest Point in January to do some preliminary reconnaissance for the big event.”
“We know we have our work cut out for us in such a competitive class but the team’s aim for this year is to learn the roads, have fun and most importantly finish. We can then come back for the 20th anniversary event in 2011 with a lot more experience for a full on assault.”
Martine said: “Without the support of Tarmac Magazine it would have been a lot harder to do this on our own the first time out. Just knowing we have their wealth of experience behind us to bounce questions off is a great relief and has made the financial, planning and logistics tasks much more manageable.”
“It’s all about learning and finishing, we’d be mad going into our first Targa wanting anything more and it will be good to be able to have an early look at the stages and start writing some pace notes after Targa Wrest Point.”
“The team has been really lucky not only with the Tarmac Magazine Scholarship but also to have help from David Watson and the Ambulance Private Team who are also running a VW R32 but in the Showroom class. David and his team are kindly and generously helping us with service crew and logistic support at Mt Buller Sprint, Targa Wrest Point, Lake Mountain Sprint and Targa Tasmania by allowing us to join in with their team and it is this camaraderie in the
tarmac rallying community that attracts us to these events.”
Australia’s premier tarmac rally, Targa Tasmania, will be the cornerstone event of a new national tarmac rally series.
The newly-created Australian Tarmac Championship (ATC) will be a four round series, including the Mt Buller Sprint, Targa Wrest Point, the Lake Mountain Sprint and Targa Tasmania, and will be organised jointly by Octagon Australia and Mountain Motorsports.
Al & Marti along with the rest of the Walker Motorsport team will be competing in all four rounds of the championship starting with Mt Buller Sprint from December 4 to 6.
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