Lance East Exotics Tarmac West Day 3 is the longest and most challenging day of the four-day rally.

Competitors raced the clock on closed roads in Toodyay, Maryville Downs and Bullsbrook about an hour and half east of Perth for a marathon day of 12 stages, 120 competitive kilometres covering a total distance of 444 kilometres.

Today was the day to get the job done ahead of the tight and technical street stages in Malaga and the City of Perth tomorrow, both with car-damaging kerbs.

Competition T200

Going into today with a 31-second lead was Troy Wilson, who is competing in the four-day Tarmac West event for the first time.

Wilson and co-driver Aaron Williams in their 1998 Mitsubishi Evo 7 have been nursing minor issues all rally, which turned into bigger issues, yet they managed to increase their lead to 1:27 minutes.

“We’ve only been going seven-tenths today, we couldn’t go hard or push because we don’t have any mechanics, my crew are all down south on holidays,” Wilson explained.

“After our original issue on Thursday, we didn’t put back the inside guard lining on one of the wheels and in the last stage today, a wire got caught on the tyre, we lost the whole ABS system going 200km/h and flat-spotted the front tyres, it delaminated the tyres enough to flick and hit the oil cooler.

“The boys at Beyond Customer who work with Lance East Exotics have raced off to get an oil cooler and we’re lucky we have a two-hour service.”

Wilson has had to retire; his 1998 Mitsubishi Evo 7 was not able to be fixed in time.

Sitting in second outright at the end of Day 3 is Bryce Moore and co-driver Adrian Burney in his 2022 Toyota Supra who have been pushing hard to catch Wilson, their car suited to the long straight roads in Maryville Downs.

Despite not having boost for the last six stages, Moore said he was surprised that they were able to maintain second outright.

“It was a pretty horrible day to be honest, we were going as hard as we could with no power, but we seem to have fixed the boost issue,” Moore said.

“We thought we’d be out of the rally, but pushed as hard as we cold, basically not stopping for corners and braking as late as possible to try and mitigate the loss of time.”

Third place outright looked as if there might’ve been a battle today, but the only EV in the rally held firm. The 2019 Tesla Model 3P+ piloted by Jurgen Lunsmann with co-driver Helen Lunsmann finished more than 2 minutes behind Moore and have a 15 second lead to fourth-placed James Lister and Steph Esterbauer in their 2000 Mitsubishi TME 6.5.

With Wilson retired, Moore will start Day 4, the final day, in first place outright with a healthy lead of over 2 minutes ahead of Lunsmann.

Dennis Heller and co-driver Frank Guildea had a rally-ending off in their 1983 Holden VH Commodore, both are ok. Clutch issues forced Drew Nutton and Tina Frank to retire their 1999 Mitsubishi Evo 6.

Competition T165 (limited to 165km/h)

The morning started with ten competitors and the evening ended with five.

From leading the rally for the past two days to becoming a casualty, Sam Lloyd and Marc Roissetter in their 2006 Mitsubishi Evo X had a tough day.

“We did half the day with a melted piston running on three cylinders and the motor making 20 percent of its normal power, then on the Bullsbrook Long stage, the rear diff blew, that’s it for us,” explained Lloyd.

Lloyd and Roissetter will re-enter the rally in another car, a Ford Mustang in the TSD category which is a restricted-speed spirited drive for non-roll caged cars designed for those new to tarmac rallying.