After taking the lead for the first time late on Tuesday afternoon, the pair have slowly widened the margin between themselves and the rest of the field of classic cars.

With two days remaining, the Travises and their 1984 Nissan Gazelle were six minutes and 31 seconds clear of their nearest rival.

However, it has not all been smooth going for the pair as Andrew, who drives while his father David navigates, pointed out.

“We hit a water splash full noise and it just spat us off the road and it was rocks or trees, so I picked trees and made a mess of the front of our car,” Travis said after Tuesday’s leg.

“Our boat building mechanic did a bit of fibreglassing last night, so it’s looking alright.”

The Travises first won the Classic Outback Trial in 2010 driving a 1972 Datsun 1600 and four years later they were again crowned outright champions, this time in a 1971 Datsun 1600.

As the event was not held in 2015, this year the Travises started as the number one seeds.

The terrain is different to what rally crews normally face. Instead of forests, they have been racing on tracks around Alice Springs ranging from fast, smooth and sandy cattle station roads to steep, tight and hilly routes.

But it is not just the terrain that has challenged the Travises – there has been some stiff competition as well.

After day one was washed-out, the Bathurst duo got their title defence under- way on Monday.

They finished the opening day just over a minute behind the 1977 Datsun 200B of Neal Cuthbert and Sue Evans, a four-time Australian Rally Champion co-driver.

Tuesday included six more special stages and after a slow start, the Travises took the lead on the 24.5-kilometre special stage 17 after a navigational error from Cuthbert and Evans saw them lose 10 minutes.

The mistake dropped Cuthbert and Evans to third outright at the end of the day, while Argentinian duo Jorge Perez Companc and Jose Volta moved into second in their Ford Escort RS1800, one minute and 19 seconds behind the Travises.

The rally reached its halfway point on Wednesday – the end of special stage 21 – and while the Travises were still in front, boggy sand in the Rainbow Valley made things tough.

“First stage [today] was very hard to pick the track. That was very sandy, lots of sand dunes – it’s like Australian Safari in there,” Andrew Travis said.

“We had a pretty clear run, we didn’t hit anything, no nav errors, so it was pretty good.”

The Travises won both special stage 20 and 21 and after the 33.06 kilometres special stage 22, they were four minutes and two seconds ahead of Perez Companc and Volta.

On the last stage of the day the Argentinians were forced to withdraw due to engine troubles, while Cuthbert and Evans had improved to second. 

The Travises had an overall progressive time of four hours, 36 minutes, 52 seconds to sit just over six minutes ahead of Cuthbert and Evans (4:43.23). Third-placed Andrew Crane and Dave Anderson, in a 1970 Peugeot 504, were even further off the pace on 4:55.18.

Of the initial field of 52 cars, 42 lined up for the start of Thursday’s racing. The event finishes on Friday afternoon in Alice Springs.