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...
