Targa Newfoundland 2010

ckosacranoid, I'm not driving this year. There's no way I'd have time to post all this otherwise :) I'm just living vicariously.

I'm going to warn you, I'll be driving out to Hallet this week and at the track on Friday. So the analysis (such as it is) might be a bit late.

Zoo, unfortunate news. One stage claimed two cars today. One was the Subaru shown above. The second was the 240Z, which hit a water barrel. No injuries in either case, but the Subaru's ability to carry on is as yet unknown and the 240Z is apparently banged up. Jim Kenzie says "the crew is OK, the car not so much". Interpret that as you will.

No updates from my other sources as yet. If anyone knows of a team posting updates, share it!

More on the 240 from the official event press release.

official event press release said: ...the Datsun 240 Z driven by Tim Gorham and Bruce Jackson of Ontario will require some serious body work before it's roadworthy anytime soon.

That's a real shame. The 1953 Studebaker has also retired due to technical reasons. In total, 5 cars were DNF today. They're welcome to come back if they can be fixed, but they're definitely out of the running for any awards.

Which is a good segue into the Targa Plate concept. Each stage has a base time - that's the one the penalties are based upon. But each also has a Trophy time. It's 35% longer than base for Classic, 40% for Modern. The reason Modern cars have a more relaxed Trophy time is because they don't have handicapping, and this means the little Minis and Civics have to hit the same Trophy times as, oh, a Subaru WRX.

If a team finishes every stage under the Trophy time, they get a Targa plate. Which is a little confusing, given that the word Targa means plate. But you get the idea. The plate is an excellent goal for a novice team or any team, really. It rewards consistency. I'm very proud to say that there's one hanging on my wall.

If you finish 75% of the stages, you get a finisher's medallion.

Bruce's blog from the Targa event:

Targa Blog

Sad news about the crash

The results from Leg 2 are in. No new pictures yet.

Classic: No change in the standings. Five cars finished clean, and the top three are still without penalties. The S2000-engined Escort zeroed the day but wasn't as happy yesterday so he's still carrying 5 minutes of penalties. The super-cool Falcon of Shannahan and Smith is in fourth place with 53 seconds of penalties. These two were running a massively powerful classic Corvette in 2008 that had also run the Carrera Panamerica. I don't know what was in their gas tank, but it would make your eyes water. Here's the Falcon.

I realized today that Jud Buchanen, the perpetual second-place finisher in his Canso Acadian, isn't on the entry list this year. That's a shame. He's by far the most consistent finisher in the event and was actually the first person to sign up for the first running of the race.

Modern: 8 cars zeroed the day, with three still penalty-free. That's a Porsche GT2, a 996 Turbo and...a MINI. Go Doug! If I remember correctly, that's the same car that MINI Canada loaned to two journalists (one from Sport Compact Car), ran them through the school - and got crashed on the first stage. The GT3 RS that I thought would do well zeroed today, but had 5 minutes of penalties yesterday for some unknown reason. That's a shame. The two soldiers are running right around mid-pack, possibly the highest-placed novices. ACP and Matt Oldford both picked up more than 3 minutes of penalties today, so they're out of the hunt now. The 5th place team has only 6 seconds of penalties, so there's still a good race going on at the top.

Open: No change. The Dart and the MINI both zeroed the day, but the MINI had 2 seconds of penalties from yesterday. So those two are basically neck and neck, and it's all up to Roy to keep from picking up a single second of penalties. An M3 is sitting just 10 seconds back as well. One bad corner and you'll see the order of leaders shuffle around. Of course, both Roy and Jim are past winners and they're not going to give up those precious seconds easily.

GT: Lots of zeros. Many, many zeros. In fact, only two of the teams picked up any penalties at all and the worst of those was 16 seconds. 9 teams are still penalty-free so this class is wide open. The winner of GT did finish with no penalties at all last year, by the way.

Apparently some of the cars are so popular with fans they've had to adjust the start times because the cars are getting mobbed!

Shakeup! I was too early posting results for Leg 2. Not all stages had been posted. There was a double-header through Gander with some very aggressive base times. Every Modern and Open car took penalties, giving some of the cars a chance to leap to the front. Gander is an awesome stage, a 5-minute blast through a generic subdivision. Huge fun. I'm jealous that they got to run it twice. I think day 2 was my favorite of the race from a driving point of view - the Leading Tickles/Port Leamington stage is still a high point in my driving career.

Modern: The 996 is on top with a total of 12 seconds of penalties. Right behind is the GT2 with 16 seconds. Stan Hartling - another from our class in 2008, driving an Exige S - is third with 35, and Doug's MINI is hot on his heels with 38...followed by the 240SX with 39. So we have a good scrap for first and another for third, and it's still close enough that any of these cars could end up in the lead. The GT3 RS is showing DNF for the first Gander stage, so I'm hoping there wasn't an off there.

Open: Jim Kenzie managed to get ahead of Roy Hopkins, picking up 32 seconds of penalties versus Roy's 39. Jim already had 2 seconds, so he's now at 34 while Roy is at 39. Not exactly a done deal! Mechanical woes have befallen the Open class, with only three cars still in competition. The S2000-engined Escort didn't make it to the start of the third stage. A MINI is waiting for parts and they're hoping to start tomorrow.

Classic: Two teams are still clean, amazingly enough. Bob Yuille/Malcolm Swann in their Camaro and Scott Giannou/Ray Felice in their 911 are both at zero. Both of these teams are very experienced, so this might end up being quite a race.

GT: 7 cars are still penalty free - including both Miatas. Good work guys!

Peeektures! I don't know when Gordon sleeps, these must have uploaded about 3 am Newfoundland time.

Roy and Adrienne on a leisurely cruise through town. Jim Kenzie describes this car as "an eight-million horsepower custom-built-for-Targa Dodge being driven by a team which does this sort of thing all the time and has won this event about three times". And he says that with admiration.

Scott Giannou showing how to lead the event. Cars are set off at 30 second intervals, but with the faster cars starting last it's possible for one car to catch another. If this happens, the slower car is supposed to let them past as soon as possible. I'm not sure if Scott (who's running in a slower class than that WRX) just passed the Subaru or is about to get passed.

Now this looks like a fun way to run in GT. Currently sitting in 9th with 17 seconds in penalties from the first day.

Paul Horton's gorgeous Escort seems to be having some trouble. After a very strong showing last year, he picked up 5 minutes yesterday and wasn't able to start the last two stages today. I love the lights - Targa is a daytime event, so they're totally gratuitous.

A classic, running in Open. Unfortunately, something seems to have gone wrong in Gander today and they picked up 4 minutes in penalties on just the one stage. Don't you wish you could hear it?

Since Jim Kenzie's updates are one of my sources of information, here's a picture of his car lined up and ready to run.

The leader of Modern, driven by Rodrigues/Laitenberger.

Obligatory Miata shot. A novice team, running penalty-free in GT - congrats!

http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11991&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

^^^This is a good thread to follow Martin and Ferdinand in their 240SX, really good writing. Apparently they did recce before the event!

Thanks for keeping us up to date. What I would give to be behind the wheel of one of these cars. Have you seen Kia's 2010 Forte Koup, team Wishful Thinking? Check the video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBAjqawMIwQ. I think Kia is continuing to drive change.

thats it? That was a pretty lame video.

As much as I like the Kia Koup, and as much as I like the idea of the Koup running at the Targa, an in car camera would have been a much better draw!

LIKE THIS ONE!

Gigi wrote: Thanks for keeping us up to date. What I would give to be behind the wheel of one of these cars. Have you seen Kia's 2010 Forte Koup, team Wishful Thinking? Check the video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBAjqawMIwQ. I think Kia is continuing to drive change.

BTW, it's a lot easier to do edgy guerrilla type marketing than you think. You need some help with it, so give me a call next time, and I will help you through the process.

Hopkins has apparantly had a big problem on day 3. He now has 9:21 in penalties. It looks like Kenzie is the only one not to run into problems so far in Open.

Final times for today aren't up yet, but it does indeed look as if something happened to Hopkins. Modern still appears to be a solid race, with 5 seconds covering the top three and 15 seconds covering the top 5 cars. I am very gratified to see Doug Mepham's MINI sitting in 6th, as that gives me an idea of where our team might sit - we ran fairly close to them in terms of outright speed in 2008, and I don't believe he's modified the car significantly since. Classic has Bob Yulle's Camaro penalty free, with Scott Giannou sitting on 2 seconds.

I'm glad to see the number of penalties in Modern. That means that teams have a chance to move up the leaderboard based on sheer speed. In a situation like Classic where a couple of teams are virtually penalty-free, only the leader can create a lead change by failing to go fast enough.

In GT, we still have 8 teams without penalties. The Miatas are amongst them, but I know that both of the Miatas had some charging problems today. One lost the tensioner for the alternator belt and it's not obvious what the other was yet. But they got through the stages clean!

KIA might be trying to drive change (and astroturfing forums), but they weren't driving anything until the dead engine in the Koup got replaced. Some fast work there - it shows a DNF on stage 2, and the Targa website reports they were able to get everything fixed in time to rejoin the last stage of the day! The KIA dealer in Gander gets major credit for this. Meanwhile, Tom and Chris Collingwood's GT3 RS is out so they've joined Grand Touring in a rental car!

More later.

Keith said: Some fast work there - it shows a DNF on stage 2, and the Targa website reports they were able to get everything fixed in time to rejoin the last stage of the day! The KIA dealer in Gander gets major credit for this.

See! Now THIS is cool! Way to go KIA!

Final times are up. The 5th place Modern car has dropped back a bit from the other four cars, but is still 19 seconds ahead of the 6th place MINI.

More importantly, the Dodge Dart Demon is a DNF. It has a time listed for the last stage, but is listed as DNF overall. So Open is now Jim Kenzie's to lose, and he's smart enough to back off and bring the car home. Mind you, the KIA is also listed the same way.

The Soldier On! team is sitting right in the middle of the pack. Some nice work there.

I have a report from the Miata team that the NA with the slipping alternator belt has been bodged together, and a new battery solved the NB's problems. So they're back up to full heath.

HiTempguy wrote: http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11991&st=0&sk=t&sd=a ^^^This is a good thread to follow Martin and Ferdinand in their 240SX, really good writing. Apparently they did recce before the event!

Are they the same ones that won GT last year? The name sounds familiar.

Some teams do recce ahead of time. You're not supposed to use supplementary notes, but the route is announced well ahead of time and there's nothing stopping the teams from driving the stages. Heck, for some of the local drivers the stages are their drive home from work!

Jim Kenzie and Brian Bourbonniere, quite probably on their way to winning Open class. Check out the quality of that road.

Here's one for the Grassroots crowd.

Ahh, Newfoundland weather. The current Modern leaders.

The current leaders in Classic.

There's a car show every night as the "pits" are open to everyone. The locals come out to meet the drivers, see the cars and maybe try them on for size. The race is fantastic, but meeting the Newfoundlanders is what makes it really memorable.

How are the vmaxx holding up?

Keith wrote: Meanwhile, Tom and Chris Collingwood's GT3 RS is out so they've joined Grand Touring in a rental car! More later.

That'a an achievement in itself. Tip to readers -- if you visit NFLD during the tourist season (and you MUST go at some point, anytime, really), book your rental way, way, way in advance.

We went three years ago, and couldn't get a rental car in late July. Apparently we should have booked in January.

The people in our youngest province are absolutely fantastic . . .

Keith wrote:

HiTempguy wrote: http://www.mco.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11991&st=0&sk=t&sd=a ^^^This is a good thread to follow Martin and Ferdinand in their 240SX, really good writing. Apparently they did recce before the event!

Are they the same ones that won GT last year? The name sounds familiar. Some teams do recce ahead of time. You're not supposed to use supplementary notes, but the route is announced well ahead of time and there's nothing stopping the teams from driving the stages. Heck, for some of the local drivers the stages are their drive home from work!

Ferdinand and his son Christoph won GT last year with Ferd driving. He navigates for Martin Walter in Martin's 240 for the Ontario Performance Rally Championship and this year Martin decided to enter TN.

ZOO wrote: That'a an achievement in itself. Tip to readers -- if you visit NFLD during the tourist season (and you MUST go at some point, anytime, really), book your rental way, way, way in advance.

I don't think its a "regular" rental. Something about a Viper?

mrhappy wrote: How are the vmaxx holding up?

No news there - which I'm assuming is good news. I have some pre-race testing reports from the team but that's about it. They have reported that the extra armoring from the FM frame rails is "crucial" to protect the unibody. I ran a set in my car for the same reason.

Live from Tulsa, OK, coverage of a race taking place in Newfoundland!

Day 4 is a tough day. There are some brutal stages (Marystown is rough, but full of spectators) and long stages. The cars are getting pretty beat up and the crews are tired. Plus the target times are very aggressive. And we're seeing the results. In many cases, the goal is now a finisher's medallion.

In Modern, the leading 996 TT of Bruno Rodrigues and Mark Laitenberger took on a fire hydrant on the 5th stage and have dropped waaaay down the leaderboard and lost their chance at a Targa plate. Remember how I said that was a hard thing to get? They're hoping to be back up and running tomorrow. The 911 GT2 picked up a number of penalties and has also fallen back, but not due to a specific incident as far as I can tell. So we have Matt Oldford on top, 30 seconds ahead of the 240 SX of Ferdinand and Martin. The Lotus Exige S of Stan Hartling is only 6 seconds behind them. With the cars taking penalties on most of the stages, that means that 2nd is still up for grabs and even 1st isn't completely out of reach for those two teams. There are 6 stages left tomorrow, and all you have to do to make up 30 seconds is get 5 seconds on each of those...

There's no change in Open. Jim Kenzie is leading by 7 minutes due to the high level of attrition in the field and some safe driving on his part. Roy and Adrienne's Demon is still running, but is no faster than Jim's MINI and it's his to lose.

Classic has turned into a race, with all the teams picking up penalties. Scott Giannou has managed to get ahead of the Camaro, leading by 6 seconds. This one's going to go down to the wire, and both drivers are well experienced.

Full details for GT are not posted yet today, but as of halfway through the day only two teams were still clean - one of which was a Hammerhead Motorsports Miata (if you don't know who sponsored them yet, you're not paying attention). Two other teams have one second of penalties and another one has 2. So this one's still wide open.

Pictures!

A bit of traffic on a stage. Assuming this is the same order they started in, that 911 is a full minute ahead of the MINI. Based on the penalties, I suspect that MINI started last and is a minute ahead of the others. By the way, you can spot GT cars in the pictures because they have four-digit numbers starting with 1. All the numbers indicate the classes, usually related to the car's age and with the 00 cars in Open.

Marystown! This is great for the drivers who pretend they are in the WRC. Big enthusiastic crowds on this stage.

Jim Kenzie in the Fortune stage. Is it wrong that I recognized this actual corner? It wasn't in the notes in 2008, and my navigator spotted it in the stage map and added it. That saved us some grief for sure, as it had lots of gravel on it and would have been difficult to deal with if I hadn't known it was coming. This is what makes the difference between an okay navigator and a great one. Reading the map to look for extra tidbits is a tip she picked up from Brian Bourbonniere, who is the navigator in this MINI. You see the way I took a story about our race and connected it to this one? Pretty good, huh?

ACP hangs it out. Had it not been for a bad day on Tuesday, he'd be in the lead. He was the fastest car today, zeroed Monday and took two seconds on Wednesday. But Tuesday, not so good. So he's in 8th.

Tire management can be important. For those who remember last year, the last day was extremely wet. The tire wear on the leading 911 of Glen Clarke meant his RA1s were no good in the monsoon conditions. The competitors now have to run "street tire" (140+) tires, and it looks like the Exige has no worries here.

The glamorous part of the event. Most of us would probably build our own cars and be our own mechanics - that's what I did. But if you have to do any serious work on your car, that means you don't sleep!

I'm pretty sure Davenport Subaru ran an SVX in 2008. Very friendly guys. They're a little more mainstream now, but not TOO mainstream.

Doug Mepham, who's run a good clean race and is sitting 6th in Modern.

I expect there is a touching story here. But I don't know it. That may be Bob Yuille, who's fighting hard for the lead in Classic.

GT update: scores are posted, and nobody is penalty-free. The Acura RSX of Townsley/Fuhrmann has a single point and is leading. This car is in the Unequipped class, which means they've pulled this off without a rally computer! Close behind, with three seconds of penalties and leading the Equipped class, is one of the Hammerhead Miatas. The first five cars are covered by 13 seconds.

Keith wrote: ckosacranoid, I'm not driving this year. There's no way I'd have time to post all this otherwise :) I'm just living vicariously.

Keith, when you have done it, how did you do it? I want to and I have been talking to my wife about the "quality time" we could spend driving the thing. But it's a billion miles from Colorado and you kinda have to drive since you need your car. We could tow the MR2 or the RA64 behind the 4Runner, but it has to take four or five days to get there, then five days for the event and another four or five days back. Whew. That's a heck of a dent in the old vacation schedule!

fast_eddie: full story here: http://www.targamiata.com. There was also an article about it in GRM this past summer. In short, I ran the event in 2008. I towed the car out and back from Colorado, taking a few days in Ottawa on the way home to visit family. I took a full month off work. I have the sort of employer who is very good about this kind of thing :) Most teams would ship their car out and fly out there to meet it, and Janel has suggested (ordered) that this is how we'd have to do it again.

A great story from Jim Kenzie. Remember the KIA that lost an engine? Turns out it was a money shift, 2nd instead of 4th. The engine exploded. Well, the driver of that car (Mark Kostick) is KIA's biggest Canadian dealer. But his dealership is in Edmonton. He poked his network and found out that the only KIA Forte with a 2.4 in all of Eastern Canada happened to be in Gander, which is where the rally had spent the previous night. What are the odds? So the rally car got dragged to the dealership and the new car got sacrificed (try that trick if you're not sponsored by the manufacturer). The engine swap took 4 hours. Heroic.

But there's more. The Soldier On team was following them when the engine done gone blowed up. Since the KIA team was okay other than a dead engine, the soldiers kept going but the car started to handle a bit off. They found out at the end of the stage the tire had a slow leak - there was a piece of KIA piston stuck in it. Now that's a first.