Targa Newfoundland 2009

Day 3 - Stage 7 - NorthWest Brook (Start Moved): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI5Xxxq0OzA

The Northwest Brook stage was supposed to be one long road all the way out to Gooseberry Cove, where we have a snack break while waiting for the other teams to finish, then turn around and run it back in the other direction again. But road construction forced the organizers to break this into three sections.

This first section was not timed, just run as a demonstration for the spectators who would have been hosed otherwise.

You can see, at the end of this video, why this stage couldn't be run in one piece.

Stage 7, Adeytown, would have been Stage 6, but was dropped from the schedule.

Day 3 - Stage 7 - NorthWest Brook (Part-A): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnunLEeCWw

Pretty scenery, rough pavement, otherwise uninteresting.

Day 3 - Stage 7 - NorthWest Brook (Part-B ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVJ4J6S0rHk

This stage was a snoozer. I forgot to start the video recorder until a 1.5 minutes into the stage, totally missing the only interesting portion. Then Christoph was snoring by the end and I had to wake him up to give me a countdown to the finish line.

Day 3 - Stage 8A - Gooseberry Cove (Part-A): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kFIUcEYaXk

It's too bad we didn't bring our camera with us, because Gooseberry Cove itself is a very scenic harbour village. We had a break here while we waited for all the Targa cars to finish before we turned aorund to start back in the opposite direction.

This time I remembered to start the camera, and it recorded the more interesting bit at the end.

Again the speed on this road was tediously boring. But, that's part of the test.

Remember that Grand Touring cars are not required to have rollcages. Because of that, the organizers purposely have to limit the speed at which we can travel on these potentially very fast roads. There are tight sections on other stages, where the pace feels ridiculously difficult to achieve. But, because of the tight nature of the road, our actual speed is still quite modest. This way, the risk of a serious crash is minimized for the GT category. That's a noble and worthwhile goal as far as I'm concerned.

It's important to realize that we are not racing. The test, as always, is to see if we can drive accurately to a precise schedule. The test is made considerably more difficult when you're struggling to stay awake and focused at the same time.

Day 3 - Stage 8B - Gooseberry Cove (Part-B ): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btDdKRRolXA

Another snoozer. But we got to honk the horn at Ross at the finish. That was amusing.

Day 3 - Stage 8 - Gooseberry Cove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdyWy1GSTT0

It's too bad that this long stage had to be split into three parts like this due to construction. This last bit, which doesn't count now, would have been tough to do.

At the end of this stage our "support crew" was waiting for us providing snacks and good cheer, while I put air in their tires for them.

Gooseberry Cove was the last stage of Day-3. At the end of Day-3 only three GT remained clean with no penalties.

Now we headed for the long transit to our overnight stay in Marystown.

But on the way we stopped at Vernon's Antique Toy Shop in Swift Current, Newfoundland.

You gotta see it to believe it! It's not a museum. It's Vernon's own collection of lovingly restored antique cars. It's absolutely jaw-dropping!

Here's a small sample of some of our photos...

Hi Ferdinand!

Took me a while to go through all those videos...
The car looks great! I looks new, ant the stickers are tastefully located, well done!
And I don't like red cars much...

Great driving, lots of calculation and timing, sounds lots of fun with your family.
Keep those great stories and movies coming!

Congrats for the win, you have a good team, a strong car, it came naturally and deserved after your long experience.


JP

At the end of Day-3 only three GT teams remained without penalties.

Day-4 dawned sunny and beautiful. Day-4 was going to be tough, with our time window narrowing to +/- 5 seconds.

Day 4 - Stage 1 - Little Bay East: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzCaGLleAKw

The first stage of the day starts in Bay L'Argent, takes a small but intense detour through Little Bay East, and then finishes in a long run out to Harbour Mille, where we stop for breakfast before turning around and running the same stage back in the other direction.

The first section was quite easy, but the pace through the bumpy tight stuff through Little Bay East was nearly impossible. Then the long run to Harbour Mille was also surprisingly difficult. Not difficult driving, but we had issues with the timing.

On long stretches with no instructions our odometer tends to drift a bit. When there are obvious landmarks accurately located along the route, Christoph will make adjustments to correct our timing. But sometimes it's not clear exactly where the routebook notations are measured to. For example where does a "Long Crest", or a "Long Curve", begin?

We thought we had it pretty much under control approaching the finish, only to discover that we were running nearly six seconds slower than we had expected. I thought we were safely running 3 or 4 seconds ahead of schedule, when in fact we were 2 or 3 seconds too slow. If you only have an allowable window of +/- 5 seconds to play with, a 6-sec inaccuracy could be a serious issue.

Day 4 - Stage 2 - Harbour Mille: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wit2vLvctbM

The breakfast stop in Harbour Mille was fun. We had to wait for all the Targa cars to complete the stage behind us before we could line up again for the return trip. With lots of time to kill, everybody had a chance to chat and enjoy the sunshine.

About ten of us were standing together when a couple of cute girls came up and asked if they could have their photos taken next to us. Sure thing, go right ahead.

Except they didn't want their photos taken with us. They only wanted Christoph! B)



On the return run on this long stage we had the same issue with our odometer reading too high. The rally computer then thinks we're further down the road already than we actually are. Meaning in reality we are running later than we think.

I wanted to hit the start of the tight Little Bay East section early, and was coming at it running about 3 or 4 seconds early. But just before we got there Christoph did a mileage correction and adjusted the odo. So, instead of entering the tough section early as planned, suddenly we were 1 second late instead. Sheesh.

We had to push hard through that section. And it's really rough with lots of bumps and potholes. By the way, it sounds much worse on the video than it really is. The video sound is recorded by the built-in microphone on the video recorder. The recorder is hard-mounted to the ceiling of the car, above the rear view mirror. Evidently a lot of noise is transmitted through the car's body to the recorder, or the recorder is rattling slightly in its mount. The car thumps through those bumps pretty hard, but it doesn't sound nearly that bad inside the car.

At the finish line, I was expecting us to again be later than we thought. So I came at it a little hot. But Christoph had already made the odo correction quite a bit earlier, so it actually was displaying accurately at the finish. I was aiming for 3 seconds early to be safe, and instead of being late, this time we crossed the line 3 seconds early, but still safely within our +/- 5 second window.

Day 4 - Stage 3 - Mooring Cove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l11o-u9YIyc

Okay this one was painfully slow. Ross pulled this trick on us earlier at Greenspond and caught out several teams. Now he's done it a second time at Mooring Cove and caught out another three teams. Curiously, it was all three of the Mini Coopers entered in Grand Touring that missed their time on this stage.

Tragically for them, it included the Mini of one of the only three teams who to this point still had a zero. That must have been very painful for them. They referred to the wrong page for the target speed and had mistakenly run the slower Condition-2 rain-speed, picking up a whopping 19 second penalty. Ouch.

Our average speed target on this stage was a ridiculously slow 39.6 km/h. This was embarrassing. The Grand Touring cars run before the Targa cars. Spectators were waiting for us to put on a show and instead we came crawling past at this snail's pace.

It feels silly going this slow, but it actually is very difficult to maintain such a slow average speed. I nearly blew it at one point when I slowed down thinking the computer was saying we were 3 seconds ahead. Except we were really 3 seconds behind at that point, so I had to step on it for a moment. But at such a slow speed it's very easy to overshoot the time window, so you find the speed oscillating back and forth, too fast, too slow, too fast, before finally stabilizing at the correct speed.

Day 4 - Stage 4 - Marystown South: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKauDON9fak

Marystown is fabulous! I love this stage! It's a good combination of bumpy challenging subdivision roads mixed with faster straightaways, and there are lots of great spectator locations, like on the overpasses overlooking the stage.

I tried something new with this video. I got the idea from watching this in-car video of Brian & Daphne in their Mini Cooper at Gander. On the dash above the steering wheel, you can see the two red numbers of the driver's display from their TimeWise rally computer.

The lower number shows the driver his current speed, and the upper number shows how many seconds ahead or behind they are compared to their target pace. When they are less than 4 seconds off the pace, the time is displayed to the tenth of a second, like ":038", meaning they're off by 3.8 seconds. Above 4 seconds the display rounds to the nearest second.

This display is very similar to ours, except we're using an ALFA Elite rally computer.

Back on Day-2 when we ran the Gander stage, our allowable time window was +/- 20 seconds. It's interesting to see that, at one point near the end of their video, Brian was having fun going fast and risked going as high as 17 seconds ahead of schedule. I wish he'd post up more videos, because it's really educational watching that display.

Anyway, it got me thinking that I wish we had our time display captured on video too. So I calculated the Elapsed Time to each route instruction for this stage and compared it to how much time we actually took to reach that point, then added a caption to the video so you can see how close we are to being on schedule.

On a straight highway we could simply set the cruise control to hold our speed steady at the required average. But on in-town stages like this, you need to slow for tight corners and speed up on straightaways, constantly chasing the target speed up and down.

If you're just watching the video and listening to the engine revving up and down, it often makes no sense at all. You start wondering, why is he pushing so hard to accelerate here, but then suddenly easing way off the throttle when he could easily be going much faster on the straights?

With the time displayed in the video at calculated landmarks, it makes more sense.

You can also see how this really is not easy. At 1:30 we're exactly on schedule at a Tee-Left, but just 10 seconds further up the road we're suddenly 2 seconds too slow. That's because we had to slow down for the sharp left Tee-intersection, then it's uphill and bumpy from there, and in only 250 metres we have to slow down to turn square right again.

It's really easy to lose time like this, and often very difficult to make it up again. So you get it into your head that you should be pushing much harder now to keep up. But then the road gets easier again and suddenly you're 5 seconds too fast and ahead of schedule. Whoa! Back off.

In a stage like Marystown, with its mix of easy fast straights and bumpy slow twisty stuff, it's very very easy to lose track and drift well outside of your +/- 5 second window.

At about 3:10 into the video, just after the first overpass, we come to a Tee-Left with a stop sign. The road goes a bit off-camber past that stop sign, so you can't see the surface of the road beyond that. We were turning hard left, with the weight of the car really leaning onto the right front tire, when Wha-BAM, that wheel went through a nasty unseen pothole. I was worried we had torn the tire clean off the rim...

Distracted by that hard impact, and suckered in by the easy straight that follows, I got a fright when I suddenly realized we were well ahead of our allowed 5 second window! I had to jump on the brakes to bring us back into our window.

In Grand Touring, all it takes is a brief moment of inattention like this and it can cost you penalties if there happened to be an ITC located at that point to catch you. That constant threat and worry gets to be very tiring after five long days of this stuff.

Exactly such a small mistake cost our closest GT competitors, Kearley/Martin, a 7-second penalty on this stage. At the second overpass it's easy to get distracted by all the spectators watching from the bridge. The road goes straight and long under this bridge, then across a bridge over the river, before we reach a further distraction at a 4-way intersection blocked with a barrier where we encounter other rally traffic coming straight back at us.

With all those distractions it's easy to overlook the fact that this portion of the road is all downhill too, meaning we're drifting ahead of schedule again. And it's easy to overlook, until it's too late to react, the fact that there is a yellow board marking an ITC located at the distracting 4-way intersection.

When we finally noticed the yellow board and realized we're too early, I just about had to come to a full stop to get the car slowed down enough. Christoph, wondering why I'm going so slow, tells me to "Pick it up."

Alan and Greg came into the same corner even earlier than us then, noticed the ITC too late, couldn't scrub off enough speed without a full stop (which isn't allowed), and got whacked with a 7-sec early penalty. Their first of the week.

Here's a good photo of us in Marystown taken by Gordon Sleigh.

I like it because I can see our "support crew" on the bridge, doing their best to support us.

My wife, Christoph's mom, is the tall one in blue, left of centre, snapping a photo of us. My mom is next to her, clapping her hands and cheering for us.

Day 4 - Stage 5 - Garnish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaq1_-5ldUo

This stage is pretty much impossible. It didn't help that we also screwed it up.

Here's a Google Map. Note that the satellite view shows an image of all the roads, but Google's map doesn't include all the twisty bits in Garnish. If you watch the video, you'll get the idea though.

The problem with this stage is that the relatively straight fast sections leading to and from Garnish are easy, whereas the twisty slow bits in Garnish are super tough.

Our allowable time window is +/- 5 seconds. The plan is to enter Garnish 5 seconds early. Knowing we're going to be slow through here, that gives us an extra 10 seconds before we fall 5 seconds behind and drop out of our window.

Of course nothing ever goes according to plan...

It's very tempting to arrive a minute early at the start of the tough section. But it would be really dumb to get caught trying to "cheat" like this. So the maximum early we can safely shoot for is 5 seconds.

But we don't entirely trust our odometer calibration. On some of the longer stages we've been surprised to discover that we're actually running several seconds later than we thought. So I wanted Christoph to confirm our odometer (and time) readings at the last available landmark before we start into Garnish. That's at a crest in the road, just before we turn square-right off the highway.

The driver's display on our rally computer was telling me that we were 3 or 4 seconds early, as planned. But of course that didn't line up with what Christoph's stopwatch was telling him. He counted down to zero, right at the top of the crest.

And then he confused me by saying the countdown was to the corner where we're supposed to turn! So it appeared as though we were actually 5 seconds late already, before even starting into the tough stuff. That's not good.

Checking the math, and timing it on the video, we were bulls-eye on zero turning off into Garnish. That's not quite as bad as being 5 seconds late already, but it's nowhere near the 5 seconds early that we had planned.

As you can see from the video, it's very bumpy, tight, and narrow through Garnish. I suppose it's theoretically possible to average 62 km/h through there, but I didn't want to pound the crap out of our poor car. We still need to drive it home, eh.

As a result, we were 15 seconds late leaving Garnish! That's 10 seconds outside of our allowed +/- 5 sec window. But, surprisingly, there was no ITC located in Garnish.

On the "easy" run leaving Garnish to Frenchman's Cove, we are supposed to be averaging 93.6 km/h. But we had to push quite a bit harder than that to make up the 15 seconds that we were late. That was tough. It took forever to claw back that time.

Just as we finally managed to bring the clock back up to zero, right there we hit an ITC! Wow, that was lucky.

Well done yet again!
That town was crazy though!
And I don't mean the turns, narrow roads, or risk of houses, that just strikes me as fun. But the condition of the roads! Dirt road potholes are one thing, the edges aren't sharp, and they usually can give a little bit. But those were some nasty roads you took that car over at good speed. Did you give the rims a good look over and spin after wards? B)

As always quite professional sounding and, though you could probably pick it out in each other, very calm without any noticeable anxiety.
How old is your son? And what number race is this for you two over how many years?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Quote
Earendil
That town was crazy though!
And I don't mean the turns, narrow roads, or risk of houses, that just strikes me as fun.

We do it again the other way, as Stage 8. It's even harder in that direction...

These tight town sections are tons of fun! The organizers can set near-impossible target speeds for us here, so it's really challenging.

Grand Touring class cars are not required to have rollcages or all the other safety equipment of the full-out Targa cars. We're only required to wear helmets and carry a First Aid kit, fire extinguisher, and three warning triangles. Other than that, OEM seatbelts and seats are fine. It's definitely not safe for us to be going anywhere near as fast as the 200 km/h top speed limit of the Targa cars. But in the really twisty slow stuff like this, even though the pace looks crazy, the chances of anyone getting seriously hurt is pretty slim as it's impossible to reach any high speeds.

It was actually the easy fast road on this stage, exiting Garnish, that scared me the most of the entire week. We were 15 seconds behind schedule and had to boot it to make up time. GT teams have a top speed limit of 140 km/h. That limit is strictly enforced with radar traps along the way. Teams exceeding that limit risk severe punishment with heavy fines or even exclusion from the event. For lots of very good reasons, the organizers are deadly serious about enforcing that limit.

We were well behind schedule and trying to make up time, but still I got nowhere near that 140 limit. I don't think I touched more than 120 km/h anywhere along that stretch. The road is really bumpy, and there are many blind crests with turns hidden behind them. There's an ocean on the right and deep ditches on either side. The Newfies have a joke about their ditches -- it's where they store their rocks. No kidding. You definitely don't ever want to fall into a ditch here.

Anyway, 120 km/h was plenty fast enough for me. I didn't feel comfortable going any faster than that. But since our average speed was already supposed to be 93.6 km/h along there, and 120 isn't all that much faster, it took us forever to make up those 15 seconds.

I was talking to one of the top-flight Open-Class navigators later in the week and he said this stage scared the bejeesus outta him. They had to do an average speed of 130 km/h on this stage to make their target time! Factoring in the really slow in-town section through Garnish, that meant on the fast stuff where I was scared to go more than 120, they were pushing 180 and up! They discovered the car understeers really badly whenever all fours wheels are off the ground!

Quote
Earendil
... the condition of the roads! Dirt road potholes are one thing, the edges aren't sharp, and they usually can give a little bit. But those were some nasty roads you took that car over at good speed. Did you give the rims a good look over and spin afterwards? B)

Hence the wise decision to leave our pretty 15" BBS rims at home, and instead use stock 14" basketweaves.

Quote
Earendil
As always quite professional sounding and, though you could probably pick it out in each other, very calm without any noticeable anxiety.
How old is your son? And what number race is this for you two over how many years?

Christoph and I make a really good team together. He'll be 21 in January. I think he was 11 or 12 when he started doing this with me.

I'm so lucky. He trusts my driving, and I trust his navigating and timekeeping. He's always so calm and low-key. It's very reassuring.

I like watching the in-car videos from other teams and comparing styles. Some teams cuss and swear at each other all the time. Other navigators end each instruction with a rising note that makes it sound like it ends in a question mark, as though they're not really sure. That's scary.

Good team work is vital in rallying. You cannot do this alone. You can be the best driver in the world, or the best navigator, but if the pair of you don't click together as a team, you can never push confidently at 100%.

Day 4 - Stage 6 - Fortune-1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh6EyJgaL7s

This is a short stage in the small town of Fortune.

It starts off fun, then becomes too easy. Compared to Garnish, the pace seems slow again. But still the challenge is to stay within our +/- 5 sec window.

Day 4 - Stage 7 - Fortune-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvCDD-DRBtY

After a lunch stop in the Fortune Legion Hall, we did another run on the Fortune stage.

Just to make me appreciate him all the more, since I was becoming complacent and spoiled by his so-far excellent navigational skills, Christoph threw me a curveball on this stage. He forgot to start his stopwatch, or stop his startwatch or whatever, so he didn't have a countdown ready for me at the finish.

I had really come to depend on that countdown, since we didn't always completely trust what the rally computer was telling us. But this time it was spot on. The ALFA said we were 1 second early crossing the line, and that turned out to be true.

Day 4 - Stage 8 - Frenchman's Cove: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt6FFqxSfAA

This is the return run, in the opposite direction, of the earlier Garnish stage. All the same problems plague us again.

This stage would be no problem at all, if only we were allowed to enter the tight section in Garnish well ahead of schedule. But we don't know whether there will be an ITC located at the entrance to town. So we can't risk being any earlier than allowed by our +/- 5 second window.

Again, even though our rally computer promised us we were 4 seconds early, Christoph's stopwatch more accurately told us we were only 2 seconds early.

From there through Garnish, a 64 km/h average is a tough task.

At 6:04, just as we turn square-right away from the water, there's a little house on the outside of the turn. This "little-house-that-could" has stopped BMWs dead in their tracks two years in a row. We were going to make damn sure to avoid hitting that house and not make it a hat-trick with our own BMW.

At 6:30 in the video, after rounding the hairpin in front of the church and crossing the tricky jog-right-left, we're already 11 seconds behind again.

Following that, there is what looks like an easy 180 metre downhill straightaway. It's really tempting to stand hard on the gas down that straight section and try to make up some time. But that's a nasty trap. It's quite bumpy and ends in a notoriously famous corner with this daunting instruction, "CARE - bump INTO square RIGHT at TEE exposure to ocean".

If you're pushing just a tiny bit too hard on that downhill straight, the bumpy stuff at the end makes the car skip, then the ABS kicks in, and next thing you know you're in the harbour! I'm amazed it hasn't happened more often. But these two guys from our own Ottawa club demonstrated how quickly this corner can go dramatically wrong, and everybody else has since treated the corner with a lot more respect.

We exited Garnish 11 seconds behind schedule, well outside our allowed +/- 5 second window. But again we got away with it because surprisingly there was no ITC located in Garnish.

Day 4 - Stage 9 - Marystown North: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc9eO8Q7oPI

This is the same great stage we ran earlier in the day as Stage 4, run in the opposite direction.

I very nearly blew it several times on this stage.

First I dawdled a bit too much off the start, then I hesitated at 1:10 searching for where to turn for a hairpin left, and just like that we're 6 seconds behind and out of our +/- 5 second window. Christoph helpfully suggested that I should, "Get on it."

After that everything went fine for a while, until right near the end. We had been running comfortably 3 seconds ahead of schedule. Then it gets a little busy through the two detours past the apartment buildings.

When I next looked at the computer display it said we were nearly 4 seconds off our schedule. Whoa. Getting a little too far ahead now. So I eased off the throttle.

But instead of the number getting smaller, it got even bigger. That's when I realized it was actually telling me we were behind schedule, not ahead. D'oh.

Time once more to, "Get on it."

Rounding the last corner we were still 4 seconds late, with another 170 metre dash yet to go to the flying finish. But then some strange timewarp happened and we crossed the finish line 1 second early.

How'd that happen. One moment we're 4 seconds late, the next we're 1 second early.

It turns out there's an error in the routebook instructions and timing. The routebook said the flying finish was supposed to be located another 5 seconds up the road. If we had been running exactly on schedule, instead of 4 seconds late, we might instead have been nailed with an early penalty here. Too bizarre.

At the end of Day-4 we were the only one of 16 GT teams left with no penalties. Alan & Greg in the Mazda-3 had 7 seconds, Jane & Bruce in their Subaru had 8, and Brian & Daphne in the Mini had 19, etc.

Targa is sort of like golf. If you make a mistake, slice a Tee-shot into the woods, you lose a stroke to your competitors. You can play like Tiger Woods after that, making par from there on, but unless your competitors subsequently make more mistakes than you, hook a shot into a water hazard, you cannot ever recover that lost stroke.

Going into Day-5 our nearest competitors have 7 seconds of penalties. The only way they can catch us is if we make more than 7 seconds worth of mistakes of our own. There's quite a bit of psychological pressure that comes with that.

The more you try to ignore the pressure, the worse it gets. Don't screw it up now. Don't screw it up now. Don't screw it up now...

Day 5 - Stage 1 - Boat Harbour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVc_HBeFljA

Friday morning was dark and rainy.

The first stage is a long 24 km run from Boat Harbour out to Petit Forte on a beautiful paved road that is so new, it's not even shown on Google Maps yet. It is visible in the satellite view, but doesn't appear on the map view. Even our GPS shows it only as a dotted line.

Our Condition-2, wet road, target average speed of 88 km/h seems quite slow, but this stage was surprisingly difficult and we nearly blew it at the finish line.

We always seem to have the most difficulty with these long stages. Our odometer drifts off, losing accuracy over the longer distances. There's nothing wrong with the rally computer itself. It's just a question of how accurately our odo correction factor is set.

We don't want to mess with the calibration setting though. On some stages it has been perfectly accurate. On others is has been bang on, except for a couple of instructions which seemed way off. We're starting to suspect that some stages simply are not accurately measured in the routebook.

If there are plenty of landmarks noted along the way in the routebook, then Christoph can compare mileages at each of those points and make corrections as necessary as we go along. But if we have to go several kilometres with no instructions, then our odo could be drifting off by a significant margin and we wouldn't know it.

On Day-5 our timing window shrinks to only +/- 3 seconds. At 88 km/h (~55 mph) that represents a distance of +/- 73 metres (~80 yards). Over the full 24 km (15 mile) length of this stage, +/- 0.073 km requires an odometer accuracy of +/- 0.3% and we can't guarantee that. So this is a tough challenge.

The Grand Touring cars always run first, before the Targa cars. And, since we were the only ones left with zero penalties, after the reseed that meant Christoph and I would be first car on the road today. We had to get up well before sunrise in order to leave the Marystown arena before 7am to get to our 8am start time at Boat Harbour. Then we had a bit of a panic when we couldn't find any gas stations open this early in Marystown. Luckily we found one later on.

Waiting to start, I was still half asleep when Christoph launched us into the stage with this mouthful, "5-4-3-2-1-Go, 170 easy left over crest downhill into turn easy left at Y onto wooden bridge..."

I'm like, "Huh? Say what? Waaaay too much information. What comes next after that bit where you said, 'Go'?"

We didn't get off the start line quite as quickly as we should have.

With all this rain, and standing water, the pavement was extremely slippery. And the opening section of this stage is very twisty and seems like it's all steep uphill. I wasn't feeling at all confident yet in these conditions, so it took us until a whole two minutes into the stage before we finally caught up to our correct time window.

At 3:25 into the video we cross a very slippery wooden bridge. It was like ice. That would be a treat coming back the other way later on.

The long 24 km length of the stage was mostly boring at 88 km/h, so I've spared you that and cut most of it out to fit YouTube's 10 minute video size limit.

At the end though, the road starts to get more twisty again, and the brand new oily pavement is nasty slippery when wet. And here's where our wandering odo almost bit us. I'm watching the time display on my computer readout, thinking we're right on schedule. But when Christoph's stopwatch countdown gets down to only ten seconds left, and I still don't see the finish line coming up, we really have to stand on the throttle and GO!

The finish line is just around a slight bend in the road. I took a big shortcut across the gravel shoulder, nearly running over the timing light at the finish line, and we only just barely squeaked by within our allowed window, 3 seconds late. Phew.

Day 5 - Stage 2 - Petit Forte: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnhOIyCtRn0

This one was tough! This is the same stage, run back in the opposite direction.

There are three possible Road Conditions with decreasing target speeds assigned for each. 1 is dry. 2 is wet. 3 is pouring rain. The GT category only gets two different speeds. For dry condition-1 we would have done this stage at 95 km/h average. For Condition-2 or Condition-3, doesn't matter which, our target speed is 90 km/h.

The raining was pelting down hard. The safety officer came down the line jokingly referring to this as "Condition-5!"

Just before we were due to start, the stage captain warned us to expect, "Ponding on the road".

On the initial twisty portion of the stage, leaving Petit Forte with the rain banging off our windshield, the road was incredibly slippery!

The road climbs up a steep hill in a long, long left bend. Christoph tells me we're 7 seconds behind. Still 7 seconds behind. Now we're 8 seconds behind.

Damn.

At 2:08 into the video, in the following long right bend, the car starts hydro-planing. Okay, this is actually scary.

I tell Christoph, "It's slippery as hell!" But I get no sympathy at all from him. He just says, "Ya, 8, 8 behind..."

At 2:28, we're finally caught up to our time window, when the car hydro-planes again through some deep puddles. Christoph says, "Ya, you still want to be ahead though..."

He's such a slave-driver, that guy.

At 5:00 we come to the slippery wooden bridge. It is followed immediately by a square-left turn. You have to slow for that turn, but the wet bridge offers zero braking traction. We made sure to take it real easy on the bridge. Wet wooden bridges have caused Targa havoc in the past. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT3UuTPQe6M

We knew the finish section would be difficult. Just before the end there is a "Triple-Caution, big crest into hard left downhill". A Triple-Caution indicates a seriously dangerous corner. They don't use this term lightly. A Triple-Caution in the routebook is not something you'd want to ignore.

We knew we would have to slow right down for this corner. Ideally we'd like to get there right at the front of our allowed window, 3 seconds early. That way we could safely lose 6 seconds here, and still make the finish line within our window, 3 seconds late.

Knowing that people are going to try getting to this corner as early as possible, would Ross put an ITC here? You're damn right he would. Check out the Triple-Caution in Marysvale, Stage-7, coming up later on Day-5...

However, he did not put an ITC here, where we fully expected one, near the finish of the Petit Forte stage. Well damn. He did it to us again! Made us slow up for nothing. Had we known beforehand that there would not be an ITC at this spot, we could easily have sneaked in 30 seconds early here.

Nonetheless, we didn't know that beforehand eh, thus we couldn't risk coming into this critical corner any sooner than 3 second early. Unfortunately, the road is quite tight and slippery already well before this corner. That, coupled with the trepidation inflicted on us by the serious Triple-Caution warning, meant we actually arrived at this corner already 1 second late, rather than our planned 3 seconds early.

The run to the finish line from there was another squeaker. We only just barely made it in our window, 3 seconds late again!

Day 5 - Stage 3 - Osprey Trail East: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46v7dWf7-sw

This is a fast flowing stage that must be fun to do at speed in the Targa category, but our 86 km/h target speed in Grand Touring seems slow.

Still our challenge, as always, is to stay precisely on schedule. With a time window of +/- 3 seconds, that's not easy regardless of whatever speed we're doing.

Again we have issues with our clocks all telling us different times. I'm constantly relying on our ALFA Elite rally computer to tell me how many seconds we are ahead or behind the pace. If the odometer is calibrated accurately, the precision of this instrument is always bang on. In theory, this is dead simple. I just have to drive faster or slower to keep the display reading zero.

However, on long stages, the odometer calibration factor has not always been accurate. Sometimes the odo reads too high, meaning the computer thinks we've come further than we actually have and, although it's telling me we're right on schedule, in fact we might be several seconds late.

Christoph, being a clever navigator, has a backup system. He punches the required Elapsed Time for the stage into the countdown timer on his wristwatch. And he pre-calculates what time his watch should be displaying at key landmarks along the route. That way he has a method of verifying whether we're on time or not, independent of the rally computer.

And still inexplicable things happen.

Near the end of this stage, about 5:00 into the video, we turn right at a junction. I have to slow up a bit for the corner, so I plan to approach it a bit ahead of schedule. In the process of slowing down though, I lose those extra seconds and the computer then showed us hitting the corner exactly at zero. Right on schedule. It's uphill from there, so I have to accelerate hard to stay in our time window.

As we turned the corner, Christoph checked his watch and announced that we were 2 seconds early there. But when I do the math using the routebook distance for that instruction at our required average speed, and time it on the video, my calculations show us to be 2 seconds late, not early, at that intersection.

So we were either 2 seconds early by Christoph's timing, bang on schedule by the rally computer's timing, or 2 seconds late according to my math now. If the goal is to always be within +/- 3 seconds, that sort of variance is not reassuring.

Approaching the finish line, I'm still relying on the rally computer to get us there on time, until Christoph starts the countdown using his watch. When I have the finish boards in sight, I try to cross the line when Christoph hits zero.

At the line, our rally computer said we were 2 seconds early, Christoph had us as 1 sec late, and the time on the official scoring clock at the finish was completely wrong. I eventually obtained our official timing scores from Mark Williams, and those show us having crossed the line bullseye at zero. Go figure.

At the completion of this Osprey Trail East stage, we were trying to decide whether we should stop for fuel. We have a 60 km transit to the next stage. But this next one, Harbour Grace, is a brand new super tight and twisty in-town stage, aptly described as "gnarly". A full gas tank is only going to weigh us down. We decided it would be better to run this one light, and wait until after that to refill the tank...

Day 5 - Stage 4 - Harbour Grace

This one is most decidely "Gnarly", with a capital "G"!

After a long delay at the start, several show-stopping issues eventually forced the cancellation of this great stage. The entire field of cars was instead led through the stage in a slow parade behind the course car.

There were some major problems, not least of which was the incredible depth of water covering much of the roads. But the schedule could not be delayed any longer without jeopardizing the remaining stages of the day.

This was an enormous disappointment to everyone, spectators, organizers, competitors, and especially to all the hundreds of volunteers standing out in the rain waiting to see us run this stage.

This one would certainly have been THE biggest challenge of the entire week!

The stage is about 13 kms long and uses almost every square inch of the "roads" in Harbour Grace, steep uphill, downhill, and criss-crossing back and forth. Some portions were smooth and fast, others unbelievably narrow, rough, swamps full of bottomless potholes. Some of the route is on wide highway, while other portions make you think you must have mistakenly turned down someone's driveway surely to finish at a dead end inside their garage.

I LOVE IT! I vote, next year, we come back and run only this one, back and forth fives times in one day!

There is NO WAY that we would have come out of this one with zero penalties! A +/- 3 second window was going to be impossible here.

Because we drove through it so slowly, the video is much longer than the 10 minutes allowed by YouTube. Out of respect for the organizers of this awesome stage, I'm not going to give it all away by showing you the entire route now. You're going to have to enter the event next year to see it for yourself.

I did piece together some of the highlights, though not in the correct order, so you get a taste of what this one is like. Note the deep water in some spots.

Day 5 - Stage 4 - Harbour Grace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNWEWFQyAhE

Day 5 - Stage 6 - Brigus-2

Brigus is the signature stage of Targa Newfoundland. It's like the Monte Carlo of Newfoundland. It is a picturesque little town, with very narrow streets lined everywhere with white picket fences. Running a Targa stage through here must be what it's like to race an F1 car between the guardrails in Monaco.

When competing in the narrow streets of Brigus, one must concentrate fully on watching the road, and never so much as cast a glance at the any of the picket fences. If you never look at the fences, don't even acknowledge their existence, just pretend they're not there, then maybe, just maybe, the fences will stay where they belong and not suddenly jump out in front of you to block the road.

Christoph and I did not approach this stage with the proper frame of mind. We were a little discombobulated right from the start.

It all began with the cancellation of the Harbour Grace stage. We had planned to stop for fuel after completing Harbour Grace, somewhere during the road transit to Brigus. However, because we had all driven slowly through the stage in parade behind the control car, rather than being spaced out at the usual 30-second intervals, we were now all bunched tight together in a long train doing the transit as a group.

This meant, if we stopped at a gas station, EVERYBODY would get ahead of us. Normally that's not such a big issue. But the streets in Brigus are very narrow. If we drop out of the correct order now, we'll never be able to fight our way up to our proper start position up at the head of the train.

But we HAD to stop for gas. We wouldn't have enough fuel to reach the finish, and there aren't many other opportunities to refuel after this. Here we are, the last team still without penalties, and it would be worse than awful to not make the finish by running out of gas.

But then, a lucky break. At a busy crossroad, the traffic lights changed to red just as the course car ahead and only us got through the lights. Everybody behind us had to stop and wait. We ducked straight into the first gas station for a splash and dash, losing merely a few places in line, before rejoining the train.

But still, when we got to the start of the Brigus stage it was mayhem, with cars jammed in there every which way. We were very worried we would miss our start time, as we honked and waved and pushed our way back up to the front of the line, only to find out that Brigus had been cancelled too!

Well, only the first pass of Brigus was cancelled. We were supposed to run the Brigus stage twice, back-to-back, with a quick lunch break in between. But, because of the earlier long delay at Harbour Grace, they'd also had to cancel the first Brigus stage, and shorten the lunch break.

It was pouring rain again. There was hardly enough time to get out of the car, get soaking wet while running for lunch, then get back in the car with the windows all fogged up, before we [first car on the road] were due to start Brigus-2. So we decided to just stay in the car.

Meanwhile Chris and my mom were there to cheer us on. At the beginning of the week I had been really worried that they were not going to enjoy this week. But here they are, soaking wet, bouncing up and down with excitement at how well things are turning out for their boys, so far. Chris shot some video of us taking the start.

And then everything nearly went wrong for us.

Rallying has way too much hurry-up-and-wait. We were frantic about not getting to the start in time, after we had to stop for gas and were then caught up in the traffic jam. Now we're sitting here waiting at the head of the line, missing lunch, all to make sure we don't miss our start time. And then all too suddenly, it's 3-2-1-Go!

Being first car on the road is not easy.

If you have other cars starting ahead of you, you can count back 30 seconds for each car to figure out exactly when you are due to start. Then you can leisurely program your rally computer, set your clock to the correct start time, program your wristwatch to do the countdown, make sure you're on the correct page of the routebook, make sure the video camera is recording, and attend to all the other hundred and one critical little things that must be done before starting into any stage. When it's time, you simply roll up, zero the odo at the line, and you're all set to go.

We'd been sitting here forever, waiting patiently with the engine running to keep the windows defogged, when they told us to roll up to the line. Then the clock lit up to display our start time and..., hey, wait a moment, hang on here, wait just a cotton-pickin' moment here!

That says we're starting in less than ten seconds!

Watch the video. The display on the clock lights up at 4 seconds into the video clip, and then the start light goes Green a mere 9 seconds later!

That was my fault. What we SHOULD have done is refuse to accept that start time and demand a proper 30-second countdown to give us enough time to get ourselves set up.

Christoph was NOT ready. In the panic he managed to do most everything else, but missed zeroing the odo.

So now we weren't really certain if the computer was telling us anything useful about whether we were running on schedule or not.

Christoph did manage to start his countdown stopwatch though, clever guy that he is, so we would have an accurate count to the finish line. But he was not happy with this turn of events.

Okay, so just drive, and we'll wing it. Better hope there's no ITC anywhere within the stage, and good luck trying to maintain an average speed of 47.7 km/h through all these stop and go corners...

Christoph is amazing. He's so calm and cool. This is an incredibly busy, tight, twisty stage. Yet, in the middle of all this chaos, while reading the routebook, and calling directions to make sure I kept turning the correct way, he still managed to fiddle with and reset the computer to the correct settings halfway through the stage.

I didn't get much chance to look at the computer anyway. My attention was mostly focused on NOT looking at the picket fences. But we had been doing surprisingly well without the computer up to that point.

I subsequently calculated our times and marked up the video with late/early notes at known routebook mileages. I'm amazed that we were nicely within our time window most of the way.

But, half way through the stage out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Christoph re-jigging the computer and asked him if the readout was accurate now. He said it was, so I got a fright when the display showed us as 5 seconds too slow, well outside of our allowed 3-sec window.

Go, go, go!

After that I was again trying really hard to NOT look at the fences. But, damn, there are picket fences EVERYWHERE in this town! They're right there, lurking at the edge of the road, ALL the time. It's really distracting.

Since I can't take my eyes off the road long enough to look at the computer, in my mind I'm still thinking we're 5 seconds behind. So, approaching the finish line when Christoph said, "Slow down", in my head I heard, "Speed UP!" When it finally clicked, we almost had to come to a halt to avoid crossing the line too early.

I sure would like to go back again and do this one properly.

Day 5 - Stage 6 - Brigus-2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXvgrZlZWY

Day 5 - Stage 7 - Marysvale

Grand Touring is not supposed to be difficult. It really isn't, as long as you never make mistakes. When everything is running smoothly there's nothing to it. Anybody can do this.

We made several mistakes this week, and so far have been lucky to get away with them without penalties. But I think we made more mistakes on this last day than all the other days combined.

At the start of the Marysvale stage, Christoph and I had a laugh about somehow scoring another zero despite making such a mess of the tricky Brigus stage. Why don't we ever have this kind of luck at lotteries though?

Our Marysvale speed target was only 63.4 km/h average. That shouldn't be a problem. But the road is very rough with lots of potholes and deep puddles. About 1:00 into the video we splash through what looks like just another puddle. But there's a bottomless mineshaft, straight down to the centre of the earth, hiding in that lake. We hammered that one. Ouch! Poor car.

At 2:00 we come to the notorious Triple-Caution dip and compression that has bent several Targa cars in the past, once scattering expensive Porsche parts all over the countryside. I've seen this spot featured on previous TV broadcasts and told Christoph to make sure to highlight and underline this one in the routebook and force me to slow down. If I don't slow enough, he is supposed to hit me with his book.

The road we're on crosses a main road. At the transition between the two roads there is a lip, sharply convex on one side of the main road, and sharply concave at the other side. One launches you into the air, the other drives you into the hillside.

Knowing everybody would have to go really slow through here, of course there had to be an Intermediate Time Control (ITC) located right there! Even though we came in as early as possible, we were still 2 seconds slow passing the ITC board. That was nasty.

And, even though we did slow right down, the car still bottomed out and whacked the skid plate.

Day 5 - Stage 7 - Marysvale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSayRCPtYRg

Day 5 - Stage 8 - Conception Harbour - Colliers

The countdown timers used to start cars into each stage, and the timers at the finish line, are controlled by "atomic clocks" which, in theory, always display exactly the correct time.

It's not just us. Others have also noticed that the clocks are not always synchronized accurately. When trying to stay within a +/- 3 second window, one or two seconds difference can cause problems.

The serious guys have been coming up to the start control at each new stage to compare their watches against the official time. That's not a bad idea. So, while we were waiting with nothing else to do, Christoph went and checked his watch against the official clock.

The countdown timer usually goes 3-2-1-Green Light. This time it went 4-3-2-Red-Light! What the heck? At one second to go, it flashed a red light, then died.

Too funny. The clock expired. It's dead and gone.

Without an official "atomic clock", the stage captain then came to us to ask what time we had on our clock. Since we had just synchronized ours moments before, they now used our clock to set their backup timepiece and then used that to verbally count down everybody on their way into the stage.

Another competitor eventually submitted a written protest, which was accepted, claiming this time was off by 3 seconds. I don't understand how that could have happened. But, it would explain why we ran into timing difficulties on the following Marine Drive stage...

Stop the video at 2:35, just as we're coming steep downhill to a Tee-Left. On the left edge of the screen you can see the rusty hull of a ship beached high on a rock.

Then at 4:03 Christoph scared me when I heard him say, "1km, square left at Tee, MOOSE!" Yikes.

Another disadvantage of being first on the road, other than the likelihood of meeting a moose, is that photographers and videographers are not ready yet and have not yet set up their equipment. At the Tee-Left, 5:00 into our in-car video, this guy got a good shot of everybody else, but missed us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8iGDsevwlY

At the end of our video, as we're waiting to turn left on the highway to start the 80 km transit to Marine Drive, look at the dark clouds racing across the sky and watch how the wind is whipping the trees.

It's been raining all day, but now there's a big storm coming.

Day 5 - Stage 8 - Conception Harbour - Colliers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVJSAwDZB2s

Day 5 - Stage 9 - Marine Drive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWBaVecvFRI

Holy cow, was it ever raining hard!

The video camera automatically adjusts exposure. It was really much darker out than it appears on the video. The wind was howling, thunder and lightning, and torrential rain was coming down in buckets.

Remember how we were worried about running out of fuel before reaching the finish. Well, on the transit to this last stage, in the middle of this ferocious thunderstorm, John Hurda and Steve Greiner's Corvette ran out of gas somewhere out on the highway! Steve has a hilarious story about how, soaking wet, they hijacked a taxi, dumped the paying customer in the nearest ditch, and forced the taxi driver at gunpoint to take them to a gas station. [Actually the taxi-driver, like all generous Newfoundlanders, was happy to help, but first had to take a long detour to drop the fare at his destination.]

After our splash-and-dash on the way to Brigus, we were okay on fuel. But we had more issues with the timing on this last stage. Christoph had synchronized our clocks with the official atomic time at the previous stage, before their clock blew up. But the time on this stage was off by three seconds. Three seconds is a big deal, since that's our allowable time window.

That's another problem with being first car on the road. If you're behind another car, you can always watch the start clock do it's countdown, and compare it to your own clock to ensure you're synched properly.

We're the first the car to start though. Christoph did his countdown watching the clock on our rally computer. But the official countdown timer was three seconds slower than our clock, so we had to wait an extra three seconds before starting.

Christoph claims his watch was correct, and that the time on our computer was now wrong. What does this mean? When the computer says we're right on time, are we actually 3 seconds late or 3 seconds early now? That kind of stuff makes my head hurt.

It took us until about 2 minutes into the video to eventually decide that, when the computer says zero, we're actually 3 seconds late. With our +/- 3sec window, we should be okay if we aim to keep the computer reading between zero and 6 seconds early. Makes sense?

Damn, I dunno. I'll just concentrate on driving. The road is really slippery, it's raining like mad, and there's a strong wind trying to push us off the road.

Not really certain whether we're on schedule or not, we just drove to the finish. Here, using his stopwatch, Christoph gave me the countdown to the finish line. As we crossed the line the computer readout said we crossed right on zero. Huh? For an actual zero, shouldn't that have said 3 seconds early now? I'm so confused.

The official clock at the finish had us 1 second early. Go figure.

Totally confused, we had no idea now whether we were on time or not at the two ITCs we passed within this stage.

Whatever, I guess we'll find out at the finish back in St. John's...