Day0, 17 April Today's Targa Tasmania prologue stages went exactly as planned for Mazda Motorsport with all four cars coming through unscathed and in perfect condition for the start of racing proper tomorrow.

The Targa prologue took a new twist this year with the combined competitive times from two stages in Lilydale and George Town deciding the starting order for tomorrow. The twin turbo rotary RX-8 SPs driven by Brendan Reeves and Matt Rickards performed well and both finished among the leaders despite a race plan designed to preserve tyres for the onslaught of much longer and tougher competition stages in the coming days. Simon Evans brought the showroom-spec Mazda3 MPS comfortably home in a time not too far behind the fourth-placed RX-8 SP of Reeves and is now positioned at the head of the pack for what should be the commencement of a battle royale for showroom honours. Andrew MacLean can also be happy with today's prologue performance at the wheel of the nimble Mazda2 with a competitive finishing time putting him ahead of several more powerful rivals.

Mazda Motorsport boss Allan Horsley was pleased with today's outcome and now has his sights fixed firmly on tomorrow. “It's always good to get the first day of an event like this behind us and to have all the cars finish without incident. We executed our race plan perfectly today but tomorrow is where it really starts,” said Horsley. “Several of tomorrow's key stages have been reversed from previous years and this should make for some very close racing. And with over 70 challenging kilometers being served up, this will be a chance for us to stretch our legs a bit.”