Ultimate Sunday drive: Toyota Supra GT vs tarmac rally stages

I’m not the kind of guy to admit to feelings of anxiety, but I’ll level with you: lately I’ve had trouble sleeping.

Sure, 2020’s been a stressful year, but it’s thoughts of ‘what if’ that are sitting heavily on my brain, making grim hypotheticals float around my cranium.

See, I’ve signed myself up for a tarmac rally. My first one. The Great Tarmac Rally is part of the Australian Tarmac Rally series and encompasses 246km of challenging Victorian alpine roads, so I feel like I’ve dived into the deep end. I’ll be wearing metaphorical floaties given I’ll be driving in the noob-tier “Tour” category where speeds are limited to 130km/h, but trees and physics are still harsh mistresses at such velocity.

Though there’s less Scando-flicky, rooster-taily action than a gravel rally, the combo of high-grip tarmac, girthy tree trunks and approximately zero runoff elevate the danger factor.

However, balancing that out is the safety of being able to use the entire road, coupled with the fact there’s no oncoming traffic. I’ve driven the road stages of the Great Tarmac Rally before, but I’m expecting them to be almost unrecognisable without a 100km/h speed limit, traffic, or the need to keep left.

Adding a smidge more stress is the fact I’m doing this in someone else’s car. Toyota has provided a shiny Supra GT (Cam Kirby’s old long-termer, in fact), and it already has enough dramatic creases and bulges – it doesn’t need me to add any more. Another sobering thought is that Peter Brock lost his life competing in a tarmac rally, and I have nowhere near his skill. Then again, Elvis died while sitting on the toilet, and I run that gauntlet on a daily basis...

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Rolling into scrutineering in a bone-stock Toyota, I immediately feel like an impostor. Lumpy-cammed Evos and WRXs rumble through, along with a handful of ’90s-era Skylines, a similar number of brappy RX-7s, with a medley of hardcore Audi TT RSs and BMW M cars filling out the Competition-car field. Oh, and myriad Porsches.

With the Comp cars bristling with jungle-gym rollcages, fixed-back buckets, plumbed-in extinguishers, intercoms, three-inch harnesses and hard-wired rally computers, I feel a bit of a fraud as I pivot my eyes from those race-spec cars to my factory-issue Supra.

But then my fellow Tour participants arrive, and it’s an eclectic mix. While some are caged and wearing sticky rubber, most are in showroom-spec. In fact, a lone VF SS Redline shows up looking like VicPol Highway Patrol trying to infiltrate our party. I chat to the owner and it’s his family car. The only modification is a set of Michelin PS4s, but he’s a veteran of this event and he turns out to be one of the faster drivers in Tour.

Including me, there are 22 drivers in Tour this year, and their motives for being here are just as diverse as the cars they drive. There’s a group of mates who’ve driven down from New South Wales to have a crack at Victorian asphalt, most in high-end Euro performance cars. There are a few husband-and-wife teams as well – including one who’s using Tour as a testing ground to see if they have what it takes to step up to full-bore tarmac rallying – and a couple of father and son entries. The cars have anywhere from two to five doors, with engines in the front, middle or rear. Yet, two things unify the Tour gang: they’re all exceedingly nice, and almost all of them seem to be MOTOR readers.

Scrutineering for Tour is mostly a formality. A roadworthy production car with tyres and brakes in good health should pass muster, and the Supra gets its boxes ticked. The only meaningful ‘modification’ is the need to run a Rallysafe transceiver in the car, which tells officials if your car comes to a sudden stop and you’re in need of medical assistance. For us Tour participants it also has one other function: to tattle on us the instant we breach 130km/h. The hire of the unit is included in the entry fee and it plugs into the OBD port, but leaves a long yellow cable dangling right above the Supra’s accelerator. I do my best to tape it out of the way.

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The first stage is an easy-going sprint from Marysville to the Lake Mountain turnoff. The road is wide, well-kept and the trees are set back from its verges. The next stage will take us from the base of Lake Mountain Road to Cumberland Junction, eight kilometres to the south-east, and it’s considerably gnarlier. With much tighter twists, more bumps, a narrower road, and tree trunks a mere foot from the road’s edge, it’s a short blat that demands all of your concentration.

I decide to fiddle with the Supra beforehand, dialling up its Sport-Individual mode so I can tailor its traits to the road. I settle on Sport for the powertrain, but switch steering and suspension modes to Normal. On roads like these, sharper damper settings could unsettle the car and interrupt traction, while less steering weight will surely benefit my arms given the quantity of corners in this two-day event. Anyway, it’s not like Sport mode actually improves the Supra’s steering feel. The combo works brilliantly. The first four kilometres of the second leg are full-tilt, with my right boot jumping between accelerator and brake like an indecisive cabbie, while I relish being able to take the racing line between apexes.

It’s bumpy on this stage, but the more pliant suspension settings give the Supra’s Michelin Pilot Super Sports a tenacious hold on the blacktop as the wheels articulate between compression and droop. There’s a lot of pitch between accel and decel, but the Supra remains stable under hard braking and I don’t feel the bump steer issues this model gets tarred with. Same again with roll – it’s there, but it doesn’t get in the way of going fast. It’s a welcome change from the “stiffer is faster” mantra of this era of sports cars.

The Supra’s inherent stability and chassis balance is outstanding. With huge front-end grip and a sharp steering rack, the Supra’s nose slices into turns with katana precision. Past the apex and winding off lock, feeding on power makes the Supra squat down over its 275-section rear Michelins, giving the grip needed to deploy its 500Nm.

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Those eight kilometres fly by all too quickly, but the next stage will be a test. Running 20km from Cumberland Junction to the Reefton Hotel, it’s a relentless downhill corner-fest with higher average speeds.

I know this road pretty well, but I also know that there’ are really only one or two clearings along it that are both big enough and flat enough to land an air ambulance.

There are 122 turns on this stage, give or take, and the bulk of them are tight. The Supra’s eight-speed can handle the acute ones in second, but third gear is the one-size-fits-all option. At the engine’s redline of 7000rpm third gear just kisses 130km/h, the maximum allowable for us Tour groupers, but it’s better not to stretch the engine that far. Short-shifting into fourth between 5500-6000rpm is wiser, landing the needle somewhere around 4300-4500rpm, right where the Supra’s massive torque curve is thickest. I tell you what, 500Nm makes for a hell of a slingshot.

This stretch of Reefton Spur is epic enough on any given day, but when closed to the public and with no prospect of cops it transforms into a guilt-free playground. The Supra laps it up, pulling into the Reefton Hotel carpark with temps in check and ready for more. After a quick reset we line up to do the same stages in reverse, before turning around once more in Marysville to do the entire morning’s stages in one big uninterrupted hit.

The second run to Reefton was magic, with the only dull parts being the brief straights where we are forced to cruise at 130km/h. However the return run is marred by heavy rain, downgrading it to a transport stage for safety reasons. After dinner, I drive back to my rented cottage and collapse into bed.

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Waking up on day two, the ground is dry and only a thin cloud layer shields us from the sun. A good sign. However, after hopping into the Supra and zipping up to the new staging area in Eildon (where I fill its 50-litre tank – amazingly it completed all of yesterday’s driving without needing more juice), sporadic showers loom on the horizon, but they aren’t dampening spirits.

Today’s ‘track’ is Eildon-Jamieson Road, another fave of mine but mercifully we’re not using its full 37km length. Instead, we’ll turn around about 75 per cent of the way to Jamieson and head back to Eildon, skipping the friendlier sequence of curves along Big River. The elevation change is not as dramatic as yesterday, but the straights between corners are longer and the brakes will be under more duress. It’s also more of a rollercoaster than Reefton, with several crest/corner combos that threaten to take weight off your tyres when you need it most.

The area has also seen storms overnight, which has ripped leaves, bark and branches off trees and coated the road with detritus. The zero car recons the route, and a warning is passed along: be wary of debris. As the Tour cars run after the Competition cars we have the benefit of running on a swept road with a visible racing line through all the leaf litter, but a couple of patches of dust and gravel catch me off guard, making the Supra’s nose wash wide. Yesterday I only ran a couple of stages with the stability control set to its more permissive Traction setting, but today I’m keeping it fully on.

And it turns out to be a sensible move. The weather stays patchy for the rest of the day, delivering intermittent moisture that leaves some sections greasy and others grippy. A few of the Comp cars crash out, and as I drive past the back end of an Evo that’s pointing skyward it’s a reminder that though this is a lot of fun, motorsport can indeed be dangerous. Thankfully all crews are OK.

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The day culminates with a brilliant 25km run from Big River back to the west end of Eildon-Jamieson Road. It’s one last opportunity to ignore the lane markings and I make the most of it. It dawns on me that although this is the fastest I’ve ever driven along here, I’ve never felt safer. Being able to use the full width of the road means there’s more margin for error, and with nobody coming in the other direction there’s hardly any chance of hitting another vehicle. This is exactly how these roads should be experienced by any driving enthusiast, and I’m a little sad now that it’s over.

With the rally behind me and my body intact, is my mind now at ease? Well, kind of. The fear is gone, but there are new things keeping me awake: the vivid memories of hurtling through alpine forests in a turbo Toyota, and the question of when I’ll get to do it all again.

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LATE ADOPTERS REJOICE

Two days before the start of the rally, Toyota announced that the updated Supra was arriving in dealerships with more grunt. The car we used was a pre-update model with the 250kW/500Nm version of the B58 3.0-litre turbo six, so what did we miss out on? Besides an extra 35kW, the torque curve is reshaped for the new engine. It still maxes out at 500Nm, but that figure is now spread between 1800 and 5000rpm, rather than 1600-4500rpm. The compression ratio is lowered to 10.2:1, the exhaust manifold is now a six-port design rather than a two-port, and there’s some additional chassis bracing, but other changes are minimal. See what we think of it later here.

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DO IT YOURSELF

Getting involved in tarmac rallying is simple, and entering yourself in the Tour category is the best way to do it. Besides being able to enter a regular road car (motorsport-level safety gear isn’t required, just a proper helmet and a roadworthy vehicle), the speed limitation and follow-the-leader format means you’ll get to experience the joy of sanctioned ‘hooning’ on public roads with minimal risk. Trackandtarmac.com helped us arrange our Great Tarmac Rally experience, and while it’s a four-figure sum to enter, it’s a price worth paying for two full days of some of the most enjoyable driving you’ll ever do.

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2020 TOYOTA GR SUPRA GT SPECS

Engine: 2998cc inline-6, DOHC, 24v, turbocharger
Drive: rear-wheel
Power: 250kW @ 7800rpm (pre update)
Torque: 500Nm @ 1600-4500rpm
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Price: $87,126

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