Targa Newfoundland movie now on YouTube

As most of you probably know, I went to the Targa Newfoundland in 2011 with a camera crew in tow. Adam Costa did a fantastic job of putting together a documentary of our crowdfunding and the race - and now it's available for free on YouTube. It's also in HD for the first time!

Grab the popcorn and settle in. I still love watching it, although my car looks slow compared to how it is now. Warning, it may cause urges to head for Newfoundland. And yes, the 2015 event takes place in a bit over two weeks.

Racing The Rock on YouTube

Just watched a few minutes so far, but so far... Awesome! Well made and what a beautiful place!

know what I am watching this weekend

Thanks for posting Keith. I have it on my Amazon Prime watchlist, but they charge for it and I've not yet ponied up the money to watch it. It always cracks me up when movies cost extra to watch on Amazon but are available on the youtubes for free.

Cool video of a great people at a fun event in an interesting place.

Special guest appearance (in Part 2 at 3:08-3:09) of my old grey hoodie and the back of my head.

T.J. wrote: Thanks for posting Keith. I have it on my Amazon Prime watchlist, but they charge for it and I've not yet ponied up the money to watch it. It always cracks me up when movies cost extra to watch on Amazon but are available on the youtubes for free.

Well, it's only been available on YouTube for about 6 hours. So this is a new situation

Adam (and others) did a heck of a job on this.

The whole family is sitting down to this tonight whether they want to or not! Thank you.

And for those that have this on their bucket list of things to do, you might want to get moving. Word is the locals are getting a bit tired of the event due to damage and inconvenience.

Still, the Newfies are some of the nicest people you are ever going to meet. Reason alone to go to the Rock.

Watched it. Bonus for me was seeing some footage from the Mitty where I could spot my car.

My son, daugther and I will be watching... The proper education of my children continues.

NOHOME wrote: And for those that have this on their bucket list of things to do, you might want to get moving. Word is the locals are getting a bit tired of the event due to damage and inconvenience. Still, the Newfies are some of the nicest people you are ever going to meet. Reason alone to go to the Rock.

Agreed. The event has contracted fairly mightily since an injury in 2011 (not covered in the movie) made the Targa unwelcome in the northern edges of the province. It now covers a much smaller area, with stages that are apparently shorter and tighter. I'll miss the long, difficult tears across the countryside of Leading Tickles and Garnish. Every year, there are newspaper articles about some people who no longer want the event to exist, but that's the nature of any high-profile event and newspapers.

More worrisome, the entries are way down. I think there were only 26 Targa-class cars at the start last year, plus a bunch of Fast Tour and GT entries. This year, there are 26 listed for Targa, 8 for GT and 6 for Fast Tour. A few more will show up at the start line. The fixed costs for running the event must be massive, and don't change that much with the number of cars. So I wonder how it's faring economically. Now, people have been telling me that Targa entries have been falling since I first entered in 2007, but it was a fairly small drop compared to what's happened in recent years. 2008 and 2011 both had somewhere around 68 cars taking part. The high water mark was 100-ish, which I think was the second year with a lot of free entries to magazines.

Personally, I was just about to announce that I was heading back to Newfoundland for the 2015 race, driving a factory-backed 2016 Global Cup MX-5. Unfortunately, that fell apart last week as the risk assessment lawyers at Mazda had some sort of collective stroke over the idea. I'd love to return, it's a fantastic experience to drive and the people are great.

I know it's been covered before Keith, but excluding cost to get your vehicle TO the vent, what was the cost to run?

This is on the bucket list, and there's another local here gunning for a 2017 entry (if it's still around).

$6995 for entry before taxes, when you break down the amount of seat time it's quite reasonable. Travel cost will end up costing more then the entry for most parties.

The cost varies depending on when you sign up. I think the $7k number is for the last minute non-planners Early bird for 2015 was $4995 plus tax (13%) for a total of right around $5600 Cdn. That translates to about $4400 US including taxes as of a few weeks ago. For seat time, you're looking at 1000 miles of driving with about 25-30% of that being closed road competitive stages.

Hotels are a big expense. There aren't many and you're looking at a week's worth of rooms during the one week of the year when they sell out. I was given a quote of about $3500 Cdn for two double occupancy rooms for the 2015 event. That's taking the easy route of just calling a Targa-savvy travel company, you could save on that if you shopped around - just make sure you don't screw yourself into a commute to the overnight arena. Right now, Hotels.com and Travelocity are showing NO availability in Clarenville, where you stay from Monday-Thursday.

That's most of it. You've got fuel (1000 miles worth) for both your competition car and your support vehicle. You've got breakfast and dinner to pay for, lunch is provided. And if you want to bring your service crew to the gala dinner, there's a cost there as well.

Thanks for posting this. Very enjoyable movie.

Just watched it, loved it. Thanks for posting the link.

This event is definitely on my hit list. Hope it stays around long enough for that to happen.

Also the movie was awesome!

I have the movie on disk, signed by the man himself, and have watched a couple of time, very cool.

This means I wont have to borrow dads copy of the DVD anymore! Thanks!!

Fantastic. I feel like I'm watching a celebrity and then I say nah, that's just Keith.