120 WheelsMag.com.au
This is our first chance to have a look at the
competition, which includes a Pajero that looks
significantly more purpose-built than our BT-50 – the
only vehicle to drive to the startline via public roads,
with a rego sticker on the windscreen – and qualifies a
full minute faster than Toby’s 7min 31sec effort.
The next morning, a searing yellow dawn lights up
the icy mist over what looks like a set-up for a Mad Max
shoot. The trucks and buggies look like angry metallic
zombie insects at ground level, while from a chopper
they resemble pond-skimmers.
Hagon is lined up third in his class and 105th of 127
entries. A slightly worrying 13 of those entries DNF at
the Prologue stage amid some spectacular accidents. It
occurs to me, not for the first time, that the people who
enter this race are all a bit mad.
Hagon and Webb will be alone out on the course,
although closely tracked by our helicopter, because
those of us in the support team on the ground have to
take a longer alternate route to get to Finke, which
means they’ll beat us there. If they get there.
It’s only later, therefore, that we discover the whole
Team Wheels FDR assault has very nearly ended only
10 minutes after we’ve cheered their chuntering diesel
pick-up off the startline.
“We had an absolutely huge moment about 8km in
where we were completely airborne and nosing in,”
Toby tells us. “All we could see was sand, the rear
wheels were in the air, and then we somehow landed,
launched off sideways, bounced down again... We were
all over the place and I thought we were gone, and
Bernie was bracing himself for impact.”
Webb later whispers that he’d said, “Caution! Crest!”,
and Hagon had heard it as “Smooth, go for it”.THE rest of us have been struggling for almost five
hours with satellite phones and some swearing trying
to keep track of Hagon’s efforts. We’re parked in a
bowl of desert so empty and vast that it makes your
ears hum when we get word that the car has made it to
Finke, in three hours and 53 minutes. Relief turns into
loud woo-hoo-ing from even the most stoically blokey
old men on the team.
When we finally arrive, Toby looks like he’s spent a
few hours wrestling tigers in a sauna. He tells us he
couldn’t actually walk when he got out of the car and
needed medical attention. “Has he been to the toilet
yet?” asks one passing wag. “Tell him he’s going to piss
blood; lots of blokes do.”
As for the Mazda, the bash plate has to be removed
with a hammer, having fused with the undercarriage,
the fuel gauge was reading “4km to empty” when they
crossed the line, and the shock absorbers have quite
literally melted from the heat they produced.
“It’s fair to say I underestimated how difficult it
would be,” a broken-looking Hagon explains. “It was
the hardest driving I’ve ever done.
“I’ve never punished a car so hard and had it keep
going. Some of those whoops are so big, and they’re
just one after another. There must be a section of
80km towards the end where it just does not stop,
it’s relentless.
“There were literally dozens of times where I thought
we were finished. Just one of the hits we took could
finish a car, and we took hundreds. I can’t tell you how
much punishment it took. For the last 80km we had no
rear shocks at all.”
A team of Mazda technicians works furiously
rebuilding the brave BT-50, but it looks like all theFew people know pain
like South Australian
nutter Brandon Burdett.
Three years ago, he flew
off his bike 30km from the
finish, snapping two ribs,
puncturing his lung, fracturing
his thumb and splitting a tooth.
Oh, and breaking his neck.
“Yeah, he looked pretty awful when
he came in,” wife Alison says. “Half
his bike was missing, the front of his
helmet was smashed off, one of his
forks was snapped so he was riding
sideways...” Sorry? He rode 30km with
those injuries?
“Well, I knew I’d broken a rib,”
Brandon told us, “cause I was stuck
in first gear and I had no brake lever
or clutch, so hitting all those bumps
was a bit shit. I could feel my neck
was sore, just like you’ve woken up
and slept funny or something. And I
could feel the snapped tooth; that was
cutting my tongue.”
This year he was back, his hands
covered in blisters after day
one, and Alison’s fingernails all
bitten off. He finished in 100th
place in just over six hours, out
of more than 400 bike entries.
And you can bet he wasn’t even
sore the next day.IN A RACE
THIS BRUTAL,
BLISTERS ARE THE
LEAST OF YOUR
PROBLEMSPain no
barrier