In Car Footage

Here is some footage from our incar camera. This was the first competitive stage of the 2007 Event, Stage 1-1 Argentia. We call it how to catch and pass a Porsche - Part 1. Part 2 to follow...

The challenge on this stage was that my intercom connection came loose and Geoff could not hear any of my instructions. That made things interesting as we used a combination of hand signals and yelling. I managed to fix the connection on the fly and we were in business...

Enjoy

Who needs a road???

We found this picture on the MSN Auto website embedded in an article on the race. I don't remeber this one particularily but pretty cool. Thanks to John at Knar in Guelph for finding this picture. The photo was taken by Bill Petro and full credit to him on this great shot!

Higher Quality Pictures

Here are some pictures from the video that we have posted in higher quality. All of these pictures are courtesy of Paul Dyer from St. John's who followed the event around and took over 5,500 pictures during the week. Pretty talented guy!

Some Cool Video

As more resources become available we are able to put together more coverage of our experiences. Enjoy this video.

Some more pictures

Some Random Pictures and Video

For Hardcore Followers - A Rally Primer

Targa Newfoundland, which uses rally scoring, is not like a regular car race where the fastest car wins. Because the event attracts cars of various ages and mechanical abilities, a handicapping system is used to score the event. Each class of cars is assigned a based time that is a predetermined factor designed to even the playing field between the older and newer cars. There are further refinements based on the size of the engine allowed in each class. If you drive the special stage in a time equal to or less than the required base time, then you "cleaned" the stage and accumulated no penalties. If you exceeded the time, then you would be penalized 1 point for each second you exceeded the based time. There were other penalties as well for exceeding the maximum speed of 200 kmh on any stage that would also be assessed and added to your time, if caught!

In our case our class had the third fastest required times. As an example the overall winner of the event was a 1969 BMW Tii that had times that were over 13% slower than our required times. Basically they could drive slower than us to meet their time. This was designed to allow cars of different vintages to race against each other. Therefore being the fastest car on the road, while cool, doesn't necessarily guarantee you a win.

For example, the fastest car in the event overall was a factory prepared World Rally Car from Subaru running in the Open Class and driven by pro drivers, the Paynter brothers. The second fastest car was another Subaru running in the Open Class and driver by father and son team of Tony and Ryan Kloosterman. Despite posting the two fastest times throughout the event, these cars finished 8th and 11th respectively.

We consistently averaged in the top 5 fastest cars each day ending the week as the second fastest on day five. This, as a result of the handicapping system, resulted in our overall 7th place finish, out of the 57 Targa entries competing this year. We are proud to not only have finished in the top ten, but to have run some very fast times doing so.

Out of the field, 9 teams were unable to finish the event for a combination of mechanical problems and off road "incidents". One unfortunate end was experienced by our friends Bob and Nadine Saville who's beautifully prepared and finished Porsche 914 suffered irrepairable damage after an off road excursion. Fortunately they were unharmed and managed to put the car together and drive across the finish line in true Targa spirit. A picture of their handiwork is above. We also had the pleasure of competing with first time Targa entrants, Nick Papayianis and Will Atkinson of Fort Worth Texas. They were competing in a well prepared 1988 BMW M3 that had an unfortunate run in with a house on day 4. They were in the running for some hardware at the time of the incident and became too familiar with our quickly your run at this event can end. We tracked them down after the day ended to determine they were OK and not only were they OK, but they managed to bang out the damage and cross the finish line to receive their medals. They will surely be competition in the future when they return.











Our average speeds across all stages each day were as follows:

Leg 1 - 108.2445
Leg 2 - 112.1074
Leg 3 - 105.1586
Leg 4 - 115.9894
Leg 5 - 102.8603

More pictures and posts to follow...

A successful ending...1st in our Class!

Hi to all, we are back after a great and successful campaign at the 2007 Targa Newfoundland Tarmac Rally. We exceeded our expectations and finished 1st in our Category, 1st in our Class, 2nd in our Division and 7th Overall in the entire field.

We ran some of the fastest times of the week.

We will post a complete summary of the week soon with lots of pictures and video from our in car camera as well as video posted by others on the web.

Here is a video clip from Day 4. We go by this corner about 30 seconds into the video immediately following the green Lotus that we caught on this stage... Credit to the person who caught and posted this clip on YouTube.

September 11th 12th Legs 2 & 3 - from the Crews perspective...

Tuesday we were off on Leg 2. The route took us through many small communities. Whole villages would come out to watch by the roadside. Kids were given the day off school. Everyone involved in the race, including the service crews were greeted by the spectators with enthusiasm.

The most memorable race stage of the day was the run into Leading Tickles. Geoff and Scott were moving very well on a 30 km twisty into the town. They crested a hill at 160 km/hr and found themselves airborne. Suddenly very quiet in the car, until an eternity later, after completely passing over a slight “S” bend on the downhill, they touched down with a whoosh. Geoff looked at Scott, Scott looked at Geoff, and said something to the effect of “What the ‘he**’, shouldn’t there have been a caution on that?” The in-car video camera tape was full at that point and no longer recording. We were approached by a fellow who was setup filming the corner and wanted to find us as he caught it all on tape. We will post a clip as soon as we can access a fast connection to get the video. He said it was the coolest line taken by the whole group. The story, in the meantime is already getting better with the re-telling.

Lunch at Leading Tickles’ Oceanview Park was hosted by 4 different groups offering 4 different menus. One of our favorites was brewis with scrunchions, which is mashed cod mixed with bread and onions, and fried pork back.

The view from the lookout at the park was worth the 10 minute ascent.

Since some of the spots designated for servicing the cars en-route were tight on space, there was no way to get the truck and trailer with the tools, and race fuel close to the car. Fortunately Gary was able to borrow his grandson Jackson’s little wood wagon before we left Ontario so we were saved the effort of schlepping the stuff by hand.

Soon after lunch on Tuesday, we heard from Angela at TDI that the master brake cylinders had arrived at the hotel we were staying at in Gander. John Dimoff at Raven had liberated these for us from Steve Gailits’ car. (We had called him Sunday night. The cylinders were on their way Monday morning.) When Geoff and Scott finished the day’s driving around 8:00 PM, we went to work on the car and in short order the brakes were fully operational again. This was a true team effort. Thanks to John, Steve G, Steve B and Angela. You guys made it happen.

Wednesday dawned cold, windy, and rainy. Someone noted that the Targa tradition of Hurricane Wednesday’s was being continued. However, the weather did not daunt Geoff and Scott. The car was now right on and they moved up through the pack in standings making up for lost time. At the end of Wednesday, they now stand in 1st place in their class and 16th overall. Having brakes really makes a difference!

The car is sorted out very well now. The trailer is compensating for the car’s good behaviour. Yesterday we had another trailer tire problem and a change beside the Trans-Canada highway. However, the trailer’s bad behaviour is no match for the good people of Newfoundland’s helpfulness. Shortly after calling a Goodyear Service Area manager, we had 3 people open up their shop for us in Clarenville 2 hours after closing time, find and mount a matching tire for us, and do so with such a good

What a day.....

The schedule for our third day consisted of 8 special stages which covered the communities of Davisville, Frederickton, Musgrave Harbour, Greenspond Port Blandford and completed in Clarenville. We drove through many other beautiful towns and villages.

Along the way were were greeted by many people standing at the ends of their driveways and in groups along the route. We stopped to give out our "hero cards" and t-shirts and to say hello and thank you for welcoming us into their communities. We were also greeted by gale force winds, driving rain and slick conditions in the morning. Rain quickly separates the field with some teams taking large time penalties as a result of driving too cautiously. The stages for the day ranged in length from 2.29KM to 12.44KM with required average speeds for our class of up to 124.1 km/h. This may not sound fast for those commuting to Toronto to work, but try it in a 100 year old fishing village beside the ocean!

The results of the day have us moving to 1st overall in our class and 18th overall. The times are very close and there still remains two days of competition.

There were two particular highlights of the day for us. We stopped in a small fishing community called Barbour Village which was a beautiful community perched on a barren rock peninsula in the ocean. The women of the community put together a fantastic lunch consisting of cod chowder, sandwiches and a vast selection of desserts. The second highlight was from our last stage of the day in Clarenville. On this stage we beat our class time by 32 seconds as a result of a fantastic run and a great show for he community. A gentleman came up to us after the day to comment that he could hear us roaring up the street before he could see us and the crowd simply loved the speed and sound of the car.

The car is running great and now that we have our rear brakes back, our confidence has increased and allowed us to drive at a higher level. As a result of our actual times on the stages we will be starting the day tomorrow as the fastest car in our class. We look to gain more ground tomorrow of the overall competition as the times get tougher to meet and our car settles into a very comfortable rhythm.

Days are still long and nights longer, so we have put up a picture from one of the stages taken by the official photograper of the event Darlington Mediaworks. More to follow tomorrow.