2004 Targa Newfoundland Daily Log 
The third annual Targa Newfoundland is an international tarmac rally for historic, classic and modern sporting cars that covers 2,100 kilometers of the challenging, twisty roads of the province over six days, including more than 500 kilometers of closed-road, flat-out Targa Stages. Targa Newfoundland 2004 is scheduled for September 11 to 19. For more information visit www.targanewfoundland.com.
Our Targa adventure will begin on Thursday 9 September. We will drive our transporter 1500km from Ottawa to Cape Breton where we will take Friday nights 15 hour ferry ride to Argentia.
Registration and scruitineering takes place on Saturday. Demonstration runs are held on Sunday, Sept. 12, at Confederation Park in St. John’s.
Qualifying takes place on Monday Sept. 13. Qualifying consists of two stages in the St. John’s area. Flatrock and Marine Drive stages will determine the starting order for the first leg of the competition.
The competition gets underway on Tuesday, Sept. 14. Leg 1 leaves St. John's for nine stages traveling along the northern Avalon Peninsula. Tuesday night will be spent in Clarenville, where we hope to repeat last year’s lobster feast.
Leg 2: Subway Kittiwake, leaves Clarenville on Wednesday morning on route to Gander with six scenic, challenging stages along the Kittiwake Coast. The final stage of the day includes a run through the town of Gander. There is nothing better than racing through suburban streets where the police are just cheering you on.
Thursday morning, we will re-run the Gander stage to start Leg 3. Leg 3 travels through the Exploits Valley for eight stages. Lunch is held at Oceanview Park in Leading Tickles. Leg 3 also includes a new stage in Bishop's Falls, which has competitors taking in the breathtaking beauty of the river in some sections. The Leg ends again in Gander.
As the week progresses, the event becomes more difficult and the competition begins to heat up. The challenging Friday stages will begin to separate the faster cars from the field. In the 2003 event, the Friday lunch stop saw us sharing a 3 way tie for the overall lead with Bill Arnold and Tom Silver. Unfortunately a crash on Friday afternoon caused us to drop out of contention. We will be looking to correct that mistake this year and we hope to be pushing for the lead right through to the final stage.
Friday’s Leg 4 consists of a long transit down the Burin Peninsula to Marystown for eight challenging stages in the area, with lunch in Burin. All stages from 2003 are back and the day ends at the Marystown Arena.
Saturday’s Leg 5 will conclude with a dramatic, fast stage in Petty Harbour. This final stage will likely determine the overall winner. We hope to be in contention for the win and will be hoping for an exciting shoot out on the last stage.
Our vehicle preparation has been ongoing since the end of the One Lap back in May. We have rebuilt our damaged race engine and look forward to getting back into competition. We have made many changes to the vehicle since the 2003 event to help improve our performance. Some of the changes include:
- Upgraded Engine
o New cams, heads and valve springs
o Carrillo rods
o New Exhaust System - A new “NASCAR” style oil system has been installed
o Peterson Tank
o Troutman Thermostat
o Canton Mecca Filter
o RX7 Oil Cooler
o Aeroquip lines and fittings - New Rear Suspension including:
o 930 Rear Trailing Arms
o 930 Rear Rotors and Calipers - Light Weight Doors
- Limited Slip Differential
- Improved Aerodynamics
During the 2004 One Lap of America we noticed some significant performance improvements and we expect that we have made a similar step for Targa.
Thank you to everyone who helped us prepare. It took a tremendous amount of effort this year.
Glen Clarke Evan Gamblin
Car #604
Porsche 911
Special Thanks to our 2004 Sponsors:
- The Burnt Squirrel
- The Halifax Group
- K&B Auto
- Mark Motors of Ottawa
- Sciemetric
- Moe's Newport Restaurant
- Tiina Moore
- Paul Racine
Results Updates:
| Results and Scoring: | www.rallyscoring.com |
| Daily Commentary: | www.openroadmotorsports.com/WhatsNew.htm www.thetelegram.com |
| General Interest: | www.targanewfoundlandgander.com |
Thursday September 9th, Friday September 10th
As some of you may know, recently my truck was involved in a freak accident. The hoist failed at my truck mechanic's garage while the truck was being prepared, and the truck fell on its side and then on its roof. There was a lot of body damage but fortunately it was repaired quickly.
On Thursday, Mike and I set out with the truck and car trailer,
911 securely attached inside, for Nova Scotia to catch the ferry to St. John's
Newfoundland. It was a rough trip. Monsoon style rain followed us, and two
of our trailer tires encountered flats. We still managed to arrive on time
for the ferry departure. Not an auspicious start, but at least it got us used
to being wet!
Evan took the easy way out, and flew to Newfoundland. :)
All three of us are safely in St. John's. The car was registered and scrutineered, leaving the rest of the day to enjoy checking out the competition and participating in the Targa car show during the evening at Mile One Statium. There was a terrific turnout at the stadium; the whole province is Targa crazy !
Late Saturday Night
The Field at Mile One Stadium
One snag is that we have yet to receive the spare tires we had ordered many days ago from the US. The car is currently shod with new tires, but we were expecting to use one of the ordered tires as a spare. For those that followed us last year, we needed to use the spare when we broke a wheel on the Fortune stage.
Great Signs and the Demonstration Runs at Confederation Park in St. John's
This is demo day, where we take a few quick laps in St. Johns for the benefit of the spectators. After the demo runs, we took the car out on the road for a 30 km run to calibrate the rally computer. We started hearing noises from the transmission during the calibration run. The noises started to turn ugly, so when we got back to St. John's we jacked up the car and inspected the transmission.
Bad news. There are metal shavings in the transmission fluid, and by removing an inspection plate it looks like we have problems with the pinion gear. This is significant. To change the pinion gear involves a mini-rebuild of the transmission including the use of very specialized tools that I don't have. The preferred solution is to install a new transmission. Needless to say, there are not many spare type 915 transmissions in Newfoundland, and even worse the car has been set up with our gear ratios.
I called Chris Kirby in Ottawa. Chris agrees to remove the transmission from his white race car and ship it to us. However, by this time it is too late in the day to get the transmission shipped. We need the transmission by Monday night at the latest, or we will be out of the competition (the first competitive leg starts Tuesday morning). Couriers such as Fed Ex would not be able to pick it up until sometime Monday, for delivery Tuesday. Not an option.
We try to call Air Canada Cargo, which bases much of it's service on Air Canada passenger flights. We know from the flight schedules that there would be a chance of getting the transmission flown out on time. However, there is no direct number for the facility in Ottawa. The only number is the central dispatch number in Montreal, and it is closed for the evening (voice mail only). We call Garth Gullekson in Ottawa to find out the number, but Garth is equally unlucky (even after calling the airport and paging Air Canada personnel, no one seems to know the number).
Our luck finally turns. Friends in St. John's contact a transport
company
(Dynamax) that promises to get the transmission to St. John's on time. Later
Sunday evening, a truck arrives at Chris Kirby's house to pick up the transmission.
The truck is supposed to deliver the transmission to the Ottawa airport for
air freighting, starting with a 6:00 am flight.
Chris Kirby receives an early morning call from the shippers. They want to know what is inside the transmission. Because of "hazardous goods" concerns the transmission was not allowed on the 6:00 am flight. Chris explains that all it has is Mobil 1 gear lube, dangerous to the wallet but not the environment. That addresses their concerns, and the transmission leaves on the next flight.
Through contacts from Robert Giannou, the progress of the transmission is checked hourly through the day. We can't afford for the transmission to miss a flight.
Today is supposed to be Prologue day, where competitors take a few practice legs to get familiar with the Targa format and to determine qualifying times. Our car and one other are not able to participate in the prologue and the Targa officials decide, because of the circumstances, not to award us any penalties. Based on our performance from last year, we are put in the second position in the race, behind our chief competition and good friend Bill Arnold, who won the Targa last year. Note that positioning for this rally is reverse order from a typical race. The cars start each stage from slowest to fastest. We will be the second to last car on the first leg.
While we are waiting for the transmission to arrive, Mike and I prepare the car for the transmission transplant. Evan studies up the route book.
Our luck starts to turn for the better. Although the transmission misses it's scheduled flight from Halifax, it still manages to arrive at the St. John's airport at midnight. Mike and I pick the transmission up, and start the transplant.
By 5:00 am the car is reassembled and ready for the first stage. WE ARE BACK IN THE RUNNING !
I took a quick nap and road tested the car at 7am.
Our team did well today in Leg 1. The objective of this leg was to "zero" the time (i.e., meet the appropriate times for all stages) in order to prevent the awarding of penalty points. We zeroed all stages! The engine is running well, the transmission is great (thanks again to Chris Kirby for lending me the transmission), and the handling is good. I on the other hand am tired. Thankfully, unlike the One Lap of America there is plenty of time to sleep each night, so I intend to get well rested for tomorrow's competition.
Things seem to be going along quite well given the rocky start. We have managed to meet our objectives and again "zero" the time for all stages. The car is running perfectly!
Our team is continuing to do very well. There is a group of 10 cars running at the top of the pack having incurred no penalties. I am very pleased to say that we are included among the top contenders! Starting tomorrow each leg will become more difficult as teams will inevitably start to incur penalties.
On another note, Garth Gullekson and Scott Darlington arrived yesterday. They spent the better part of today scouting out locations for still photos and videos for the last two legs of the race.
We started Friday by trailering the car over the 4 hour transit
from Gander to Marystown.
In 2003 we hit a bump on the Marystown stage in a tight braking zone and barely
missed a fire hydrant. That same bump played a role again this year. Entering
the corner I was so focused on negotiating the bump that I did not set up
the corner and promptly blew the entry. A classic mistake of not keeping my
eyes up. I put the car into a spin to slow it down and unfortunately the engine
stalled. I think the fuel must have slopped out of the bowls. We took a deep
breath, restarted the car and flew through the rest of the stage. We got very
lucky and still managed to make our base time.
At the lunch break, 4 cars remained tied for the overall lead
with zero points. Bill and Tammi (BMW Bavaria), Roy and Adrienne (BMW M3),
Judd and Peter (Acadian) and us.
The Grandbank stage is one of our favourites on Targa. It is a very tight
and twisty town stage that goes on forever. We flew through the stage and
beat our base time by a wide margin. Unfortunately so did the other leaders.
For the second year in a row the Fortune stage decided the finishing order of the rally. Fortune is a difficult town stage on some very challenging surfaces. (think of a gravel truck dumping a load on the pavement and then you have to drive as fast as you can across it) We broke a wheel on this stage in 2003 and we approached the stage cautiously. Unfortunately our caution slowed us too much and although we turned an identical time to Bill Arnold, the handicap system caused us to lose 5 seconds to Bill. We were not too concerned as we expected to make up the time on future stages. (During the awards gala, I was introduced to Newfoundland's Minister of Services and Transportation Tom Rideout. I politely asked him to consider providing some funding to the town of Fortune to help them improve their challenging roads.)
The final stage on Friday saw us running the Marystown stage in reverse. We had a fantastic run through the town but blew a corner near the end of the stage that cost us another 3 seconds to Bill. Our stage notes indicated that the turn was 130m on the other side of a blind crest. The corner came up quicker than expected and we had to reverse back up the hill to make the turn.
This is a very competitive event and you have to attack every corner. Unfortunately there is a very small margin between too slow and too fast.
At the end of the day the top four positions ranked as follows:
- 1st Bill & Tammi (BMW Bavaria) 10 seconds
- 2nd Roy and Adrienne (BMW M3) 11 seconds
- 3rd Judd and Peter (Acadian) 12 seconds
- 4th Glen and Evan (P911) 18 seconds
Anyone could still win.
Saturday started with heavy fog and rain. Hurricane Ivan was starting to affect the Island.
The day's first stage, Osprey Trail, was cancelled due to visibility. Racing in the rain is no problem but running heavy fog on unknown roads is a bit too dangerous. Moose are hard to see in the fog.
The afternoon stages were run in light fog and rain but unfortunately for us, all of the top 4 teams cleaned every stage and no change in points occurred.
The rally came down to the final stage in Petty Harbour, just
outside of St. John's.
We attacked this stage with everything we had left and zeroed the time. We
had a chance. Roy and Adrienne took a 1 second penalty, Judd and Peter took
4 seconds while Bill and Tammi scored a zero.
The teams were all very competitive and unfortunately for us
the results remained the same.
Our Final Results:
- 4th overall (47 car field) 8 seconds behind first place
- 2nd in Modern (1977 to present) 6 seconds behind first place
- 1st in Class 6
We had a tremendous event. The organizers did a great job running
the competition. The people of Newfoundland provided fantastic hospitality.
The scenery was breathtaking. We met with many old friends and lots of new
friends were made.
Special thanks to everyone that helped us complete the event.
We look forward to competing again next year. If you would like to join us
as a competitor, crew or supporter please feel free to contact us. We would
be happy to help get you involved. glen@openroadmotorsports.com
