After an exciting prologue event on Thursday, Steve Jones in his R35 Nissan GT-R got off to a great start in for Friday’s first competitive stage of the Quit Targa West 2009 in Western Australia. The prologue event consisted of two laps of the 3.4 km stage with Jones managing the best time in the LF Performance Nissan GT-R. Not far behind him in third place was Tony Quinn campaigning his VIP Petfoods Nissan GT-R entry.

Steve Jones is not a newcomer to the Quit Targa West, in fact he won outright in 2008 in the same Nissan GT-R so expectations are high for a solid performance.

Due to the reverse start order system this meant that Steve was last to start the first of seven stages for Leg 1 on Friday. After the third leg it looked like Jones was right on track to take a back to back win but in SS4 Tony Quinn in his GT-R was to snatch the lead and continue on to put 13 seconds distance between himself and Jones by the end of the day.

So the leadership goes from GT-R to GT-R at the end of Leg 1 on Friday. Reports of rain for Leg 2 on Saturday look like the GT-R’s AWD system might give the leaders an advantage indeed.

We’ll keep you updated but live results and updates can be found at the Quit Targa West website below.

Link: Quit Targa West Website
Link: Quit Targa West Live Updates
Images: Circlework and Travis Barnes