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There was a steady rain over Marystown as teams filed out of the arena for the long transit to the first stage of the ultimate day of competition in this 8th edition of Targa Newfoundland. The Subaru Canada Targa Rally Team had a surprise for its driver that morning. As I walked over to our Targa STI, I saw that it now had two brand-new right-side doors with only a few decals and numbers missing: “you have a whole new car this morning” said co-driver and chief mechanic Stewart Hoo.



The field regroups in Boat Harbour before the return run

Over the past twenty years or so, I have been quite fortunate to drive a number of race and rally cars in competition, as a guest and a journalist. My family and my closest friends and colleagues can attest that my desire to bring each of these cars to the finish line, without the slightest damage or scratch, bordered on the obsessive. My crash in the Prologue this year put a major dent in my virtually-spotless record, to say the very least. Pun intended.

To say that I was upset and disappointed with myself on Sunday, lying in that ambulance, strapped to a hard stretcher board from head to toe, with the ambulance’s sirens wailing as we headed for the hospital in St. John’s is putting it very mildly. I was devastated, very simply, then believing that I had destroyed a team’s tireless efforts and Subaru’s dream of shooting for that elusive first overall victory at Targa. Yet, hours only later, I was at the wheel of the Targa STI, ready to take the start with a new co-driver.



Glen Clarke's Porsche 911 had precious little grip in the rain

And now, five days later, with a car that felt strong and would soon look almost brand-new once again, I had a second shot at bringing her home to the finish in St. John’s in virtually perfect shape, with a healthy crew and an honourable finishing result. But Mother Nature soon made sure it wouldn’t be easy.

Nine stages were scheduled for Targa 2009’s fifth and final leg, and all would be driven in ‘road condition 3’, on wet pavement, or worse. Just before the first start of Boat Harbour, a very promising new stage with a fast, flowing layout, Glen Clarke expressed concern at his Porsche 911’s ability to handle the wet roads with these wide rear tires. Stewart tried his best to reassure him: “with all this weight at the rear for traction you’ll be fine” but Glen would soon be proven right.



As if their day had not been bad enough, a moose jumped into Glen Clarke and Andy Proudfoot's path during the very last stage of the rally, on Marine Drive (photo: Brenda Malone)

Our Targa STI felt good on this first run, in spite of the slippery conditions, especially on a short section of wooden bridge that had us sliding sideways for a moment, in spite of my best precautions. We even caught Tom Collingwood and his cousin and co-driver Chris Collingwood, in the former’s spectacular orange Porsche 911 GT3RS, about halfway through the stage. Even though safety and reaching the finish line in St. John’s remained our absolute goals for the day, Stewart could not help but note that catching the Collingwoods could benefit us since they were immediately ahead of us in the current overall standings.



Chief mechanic/co-driver Stewart Hoo discusses settings and strategy with team coordinator Cathy Cole

During the long stopover in the gorgeous Petite Forte community, as competitors and officials regrouped for the run back on the same course, the rain started falling harder. Stewart and I decided to try disconnecting the front sway bar to improve front-end grip. This proved more effective than we wished. The combination of quicker and sharper steering and thicker standing water was properly hair-raising. Quite simply, it was by far the scariest stage in my three years at Targa and quite possibly my worst time ever in a car. The STI was a twitchy, nervous handful even in a straight line, at a steady speed.

But we were not alone in our predicament. We soon caught and handily passed the Collingwood Porsche and this time, the much slower speeds meant that we would be gaining these thirty seconds on them in the overall standings. But our immediate concern was to simply survive this stage and complete it without harm. A few hundred meters from the finish of this 24-kilometre stage, we were even caught by Steve Millen and Mike Monticello in their Nissan GT-R. After it was all done, we heard horror stories from many of the top teams, including Glen Clarke who would later swear that he was unable to go faster than 90 km/h all day. Rain is known as The Great Equalizer in racing circles. That day, it would cost Glen and co-driver Andy Proudfoot a shot at the overall win which would have been Clarke’s second after his victory in 2006.



The Subaru Canada Targa 2009 Rally Team: Keith Townsend, Andrew Sorensen, Stewart Hoo, Cathy Cole, Nick Searancke and Lewis Myers (photo by driver/blogger Marc Lachapelle)

It was a white-knuckle experience throughout, even while simply driving in transit on the TransCanada Highway. Stewart and his boys kept working on the car to finally make it stable in these atrocious conditions. They first reconnected the front stabilizer bar and later added toe-in to the front and rear wheels, at Stewart’s request. We also benefited greatly from Keith Townsend’s extensive rally experience and his keen knowledge of Targa itself. He remembered using the packed, gravel surface of the road shoulders to great advantage on the Osprey Trail East stage in similar conditions while in contention for the overall win in 2006. It worked impeccably indeed, and I would use this technique with great success for the rest of our rally.

Stewart’s tweaks also made the STI infinitely better on any wet surface from that point on. We completed our stages one by one, according to plan. Our relief, after – carefully – blowing by the ‘flying finish’ on Marine Drive is hard to describe, after everything we had experienced in the past five days. Going from ambulance stretcher to the finish of Targa Newfoundland is an experience I probably will never top.



Three-time winners Roy Hopkins and Adrienne Hugues with fellow American Mike Monticello

Stewart and I were truly elated while carefully driving our tough, fast and gritty Targa STI into St. John’s for the official finish on the Harbour. I thanked him repeatedly, for the numerous miracles he performed to keep us in the rally, and for the outstanding job he did as a co-driver, jumping in cold, on the morning of Leg One. After performing a couple of ‘steam-outs’ (how else should I be calling a ‘burn-out’ on wet pavement?) on the finish line, we parked the STI and jumped out to celebrate with our teammates.



Christoph and Ferdinand Trauttmansdorf won in Grand Touring with a perfect score of zero

We then learned that Roy Hopkins and Adrienne Hugues had taken their third straight overall win in the Targa competition with only 10 seconds of total penalties. The German team of Michael Stoschek and Philipp Spaeth had earlier lost their provisional lead after hitting one of the many fences in the extremely tight Brigus stage and finished with 23 seconds of penalties. Tied in third place was the thundering duo of Jud Buchanan and Jim Adams in the legendary 1967 Acadian Canso and Bob Yuillie and Kirk Alexander in their 1969 Chevrolet Camaro, with a score of 33 seconds each.



The Subaru Targa Team rejoicing at the finish in St. John's

The best-placed Modern car was Steve Millen and Mike Monticello’s 2009 Nissan GT-R with 1:21 of penalties, in sixth place overall. And we finished 12th overall in our Targa STI, with 5:18 in penalties. And in Grand Touring competition, the father-son team of Ferdinand and Christoph Trauttmansdorf won in their BMW 325i with a perfect score of 0 penalties.

FINAL OVERALL RESULTS – TARGA COMPETITION

FINAL OVERALL RESULTS – TOURING COMPETITION

Team Subaru Targa had a very good Fourth Leg on Thursday. Our goal is to be safe first and foremost, and then turn in the best possible stage times. Happy to report that we have given our guys no work beyond the normal checks all through Thursday, with the single exception of a thorough look at the Targa STI’s rear axle assembly after our second run through the tight, short and twisty stage in Fortune.



Our Targa STI in action (photo Warwick Patterson, formulaphoto.com)

Stewart also called for very small changes to the rear suspension settings that made a gigantic difference in stability. The STI had proven a bit scary while traversing the generally fast Garnish stage at speeds of close to 200 km/h (never over, by rule) on very bumpy pavement.

By the end of Leg 4, after the dust had settled on the hairy Marystown city stage, Glen Clarke and Andy Proudfoot were still leading the rally with only 4 seconds of penalties in Glen’s Porsche 911 Carrera, followed by the German team of Michael Stoschek Philipp Spaeth in an older Porsche 911, at 9 seconds.



Rally leaders Glen Clarke and Andy Proudfoot

In Grand Touring, Ferdinand and Christoph Trauttmansdorfare still penalty-free after four hard days in their red 1990 BMW 325i. Christoph, always with a wide smile, must be one heck of a math student and his dad obviously knows what to do with a steering wheel and a few pedals.

It’s still dark outside and raining, as Leg 5 beckons. Let’s just hope we all make it to the finish on the harbour at St. John’s at the end of this day.

We were in very good shape entering Leg Three on Wednesday. The car felt strong with the slightly higher boost pressure co-driver/chief mechanic Stewart Hoo had dialled in. And if it wasn’t good, he would whip out his computer and change it as we rolled on in a transit. How cool is that. One of the reasons Stewart was able to jump into the co-driver’s on Monday when official co-driver Keith Townsend woke up in pain is that he routinely sits in the right seat of race cars, at race speeds, on tracks like the formidable Mosport GP course and changes the engine mapping on his laptop without even looking up.



Two generations taking a closer look at the STI in Gooseberry Cove

Things turned a little weird on the second special stage of the day – Frederickton/Carmanville – that starts with a kilometre-long drag race into a medium right-hander and an immediate acute right turn into a narrow uphill and then a series of kinks before a 90-degree right-hand turn onto an open sideroad (I’m beginning to sound like a co-driver myself. These instructions are getting to me…).

We then get to motor seriously with our stronger STI and Stewart soon becomes alarmed when he sees our Timewise rally computer rack up more than a minute of ‘ahead, time’ against what he has inputted as our target time and average speeds. You cannot average more than 135 km/h, at the risk of being fined, and then penalized, so we slow right down.



Classics and Moderns in Gooseberry Cove

Soon, I see Steve Millen and Mike Monticello’s orange Nissan GT-R come up. They started 30 seconds after us, slow down a bit and motor on. Then, it’s the glorious Group B Audi Quattro with Frank Sprongl and Rod Hendricksen on board. At that point, Stewart suspects a problem and says: “ok, just go!”

This part, I really enjoyed. After booting it, I was able to keep up with rally master Frank as he set the Quattro up for high-speed corners, obviously with a dab of his left foot on the center pedal: “I only brake with the left foot, ever”. It’s not often you get such a treat at Targa with the staggered start times.

A kilometre down the stage, our problem remains whole: we still are more than a minute ahead on the clock and want neither a fine, nor a penalty. So we slow right down and almost come to a stop to let the seconds slip before rolling by the red ‘Flying Finish’ boards (!) at barely a snail’s pace.



Co-driver Murray Smith crunching numbers for their 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint

Still totally puzzled, Stewart shows the target times we had used with Frank Sprongl who quickly recognizes that these times are from the ‘Trophy Times’ sheet that follows the one for proper base times in the official route book. These times determine a crew’s admissibility to the coveted Trophy plates and reward consistency and speed at Targa Newfoundland and are notably longer than the base time. In this stage, our correct target time was 4.52 and our Trophy Time was 6.24. Experienced co-drivers typically rip the Trophy Times pages out of the route but this one slipped through as Keith prepared the day’s instructions to help Stewart, who was still in his third day ever as a co-driver.

It’s just one of those things in a rally that has been eventful for our team, to say the very least. We would have easily ‘zeroed’ this stage and instead will take a big penalty. Stewart thinks 1.32 but the official Leg Three results say 1.17. What I simply don’t understand is the 1.44 of penalties we have actually picked up during the entire Leg Three have turned into 6.44, which drops us to 24th place overall, not quite the position we were shooting for. It’s either a simple mistake and our 2.23 total penalties nevertheless leave us in 14th, or we’ve been assessed a 5-minute penalty for unknown reasons. The ‘detailed penalties’ page still says ‘Not yet available’ at the moment. We’ll put Keith on this case.



The Targa caravan stops at Vernon's Toy Shop in Swift Current

At the top, Glen Clarke and Andy Proudfoot are still penalty-free in a Porsche 911 Carrera that blows great billows of gray smoke like a low-slung diesel dragster at every stage start. Tied in second place are now the German team of Michael Stoschek and Philipp Spaeth, who are reportedly – and puzzlingly – running their immaculate lime-green 1965 Porsche 911 with full WRC rally-style ‘pace notes’ and the 1967 Acadian Canso of three-time second-place man and sole Platinum Targa Plate holder Jud Buchanan and co-driver Jim Adams, with only three seconds of penalties.

And it's still a three-way battle in Grand Touring between Brian Jarvis and Daphne Sleigh in their Mini Cooper S/JCW, Alan Kearley and Greg Martin in their blue Mazda3 GT and the father-son team of Ferdinand and Christoph Trauttmansdorf in a red 1990 BMW 325i, all still with zero penalties after three days of competition.



Vernon's Toy Shop features a stunning collection of convertibles of all periods

That said, the most exciting part of my day was watching Stewart whip out tools and dismantle our Targa STI’s electrical control panels minutes only before the start of the Gooseberry Cove stage. The ignition was dead, inexplicably, seconds only after I had driven the car up the hill to pick Stewart up. I was fully strapped in, ready for action but strangely calm, in utter fascination at Stewart’s frantic wrench-turning and probing of all the possibly faulty wire connections, breakers and relays in our rally car. Somehow, I must have known that Stewart would get us going again and he did, with a few minutes to spare. Just enough to slip his helmet back on, strap in and to bring his heart rate down a bit.

Another miracle for our Targa. Without Stewart, we would again have been out of this rally. The man is my absolute hero. We stopped at the stunning Vernon’s Antique Toy Shop car museum (www.vernonsantiquetoyshop,ca) on the way back. Stewart then drove the Targa STI to Marystown with Cathy Cole, the Great Overseer of all things for Subaru Rally Team Canada - and his everyday accomplice - at his side.

What a day, indeed. All normal at Targa Newfoundland.

You really need to sleep as well as possible when tackling the six-day endurance race that is Targa Newfoundland, but that is easier said than done. As a driver, you must first let the adrenalin consume itself in your veins after the utter thrill that is the in-town stage at Gander at the end of Leg Two, run at dusk on Tuesday,

You then sign and hand out piles of hero cards, posters, baseball hats and the likes during the car show in the Gander arena, look for results, file claims or go hunting for parts to fix your car. The variations are limitless. If you are lucky, you finally get a normal meal and go to sleep before midnight with the alarm set for starting times as early as 7:30. This means up at around 5:30 for these early starters.



Targa co-founder/racer/journalist Jim Kenzie always has time for the fans, whether it's this tiny one at Gooseberry Cove or the readers of his own daily Targa blog

And then you have crazies like fellow journalist + Targa competitor + Targa cofounder + dear friend Jim Kenzie and I who write blogs and such after all this. With his off-road adventure in last year’s Targa, Jim has promised to sleep more (read for yourself in his blog on the Wheels.ca site at http://thestar.blogs.com/kenzie) and co-driver Brian Bourbonniere told me last night that Jim, usually a night owl, was all tucked in at 11:00 and keeping his promise.

I am doing my best but finally turned the light off at about 1:30 this morning after catching up the day’s results, essential emails and downloading photos. At about 5:00, mouth parched, I get a glass of water and the brain kicks in. I have tried counting STis and Evos taking the famous Camp Brûlé jump at the Baie-des-Chaleurs rally (including Pat Richard’s winning STI on only three tires this year), to no avail. I might as well get up.

The mind is obviously filled with Targa stuff; yesterday’s stages and today’s, the blogs and whether or not our official co-driver Keith Townsend will be able to start Leg Three today. When I finally got to bed, Keith and Stewart were going our for a test drive in the Targa STI to see if he could physically manage it with his cracked ribs.



Our Targa STI and the Millen/Monticello GT-R before the start in Gander

Leg Two went well for Stewart and I in the Targa STI but we nonetheless ended the day with some penalties, but so did all other Targa competitors save one: 2006 overall winner Glen Clarke and co-driver Andy Proudfoot in the blue Porsche 911 Carrera Glen has built from the shell of a 1976 car he swears he bought on eBay for $300. Glen and Andy share this rare zero score after Leg Two, but Jud Buchanan and Jim Adams are only a second adrift in Jud’s thundering 1967 Acadian Canso. Third are German driver Michael Stoschek and American co-driver Philipp Spaeth in a 1965 Porsche 911 with only three seconds of penalties, followed in fourth by Steve Millen and Mike Monticello in the formidable 620-hp Nissan GT-R Steve has built for his first Targa Newfoundland with 6 seconds in penalties. In fifth place, double overall winners Roy Hopkins and Adrienne Hughes are in their usual strong position, with 8 seconds of penalties, in their multicoloured 1969 BMW 2002.



Stewart Hoo and your Targa blogger (photo: Rod Hendricksen)

Subaru Targa’s chief mechanic and co-driver Stewart Hoo and I are now 14th in the overall standings with 35 seconds of penalties. We strangely took four seconds in stage six and another 31 seconds in the tough Gander stage. I am responsible for about a dozen of these seconds after overshooting a turn but was otherwise thrilled with the handling and speed of the Targa STI with the tweaks and settings Stewart and I have come up with after experimenting in previous stages. I know that I can now drive the car hard, with confidence. The coming stages and days will be interesting.

I would be remiss not to mention that eight still carry a perfect score of zero in the Grand Touring competition, including Ferdinand and Christoph Trauttmansdorff from Ottawa in their 1990 BMW 325i. Ferdinand was surprised that I remembered lending him a wheel so that he could compete in a race in his Honda Civic in 1988 at Sanair. He had broken two after running over the formerly-infamous Sanair curbs.

Gotta wrap this up now. Our Targa start time beckons for Leg Three.

Sorry for not updating or adding much to this blog in the past two days. I was frankly not in the shape or spirit to do so. We effectively went off the road quite hard on the very first Prologue run on the Flatrock stage on Sunday. There is a dip inside one of the left-hand corners that had a strange effect on our car when traversed at a great rate of speed. This Targa Subaru STI is soooooo fast with the boost turned fully up.

In the aftermath, I had a glimpse of our car very briefly before getting a ride back to St-John’s in another type of vehicle. I frankly believed that this would be the last ride I would have at this year’s Targa, but that was counting without the remarkable strength of this team. I was told a bit later that chief mechanic Stewart Hoo and the guys – Andrew, Lewis and Nick – had the STI rolling on its own before taking it to Capital Subaru where John Howard immediately opened the doors to his shop.



Nick fixing the right-side doors at Capital Subaru late Sunday night

Much later, in the wee hours of the morning, the Targa STI was ready for action. It looked a bit worse for wear on the right side, but we were back in the rally. And since Prologue ‘doesn’t count’ (yeah, right: tell that to the guys who worked on the car through the night) we would start the ‘official rally’ with a clean slate.

That said, we had another big challenge ahead of us. On Monday morning, co-driver Keith Townsend woke up with ‘stabbing pain’ in his upper body whenever he tried to lift anything. His suitcase, for instance, since we were checking out of our hotel for a trek across the peninsula in the coming days. Keith was in no shape to ride or even twist himself into our race car. He was later found to have cracked ribs, and if you have never had such an injury, you simply cannot imagine how much it hurts. I have and I do.

The search was thus on to find a co-driver, at least for Leg One we thought at that moment. Trust us, it’s not easy to find one of these on the morning of the first competition day at Targa. Since there was no way Stewart Hoo and his team had done all this work on the car only to see the team get a DNS (did not start, in race lingo), our chief mechanic slipped Keith’s new racing suit over his full clothes (they are not the same size) and decided he would co-drive for the first time of his life, at Targa. Knowing Stewart, if anybody could pull it off, it was him.



Subaru Rally Team Canada's chief mechanic Stewart Hoo will be doing much more than using his racing tool box at Targa Newfoundland this year

The age-old motto of rallymen (and women) ‘Press On Regardless’ is not taken lightly at Subaru Rally Team Canada.

To make a long story short – and a long story can be written for each and every team at Targa Newfoundland – Stewart and I completed Leg One, the first official competition day of Targa 2009 without a single penalty, along with twelve other teams. Among them, most of the usual suspects and a few newcomers, such as Steve Millen and Mike Monticello in their fiery orange Nissan GT-R.



Andrew and Lewis helping Stewart put our Targa STI back into the trailer after Leg One, for the transit to Gander

Stewart and his guys had already performed a few miracles in the shop but Stewart himself pulled another one out of his hat as a co-driver. Adding to the challenge is the fact that we had to nurse the STI’s racing clutch from the second special stage of Leg One at Placentia to the seventh and last at Eastport, avoiding hard launches at the start and minimizing shifts thereafter.

This morning, I trust that Stewart and the crew have solved the clutch problem and that they have made the adjustments my co-driver and I have discussed to make the car less nervous in high-speed corners. Which other driver has the luxury of also having his (or her) chief mechanic in the ‘right seat’ to discuss car setup during the long transits?

Leg Two of Targa starts this morning and we will stick to the same, simple strategy: taking it one stage at a time and then one day at a time. With the invaluable help of the crystal-clear instructions Keith has prepared, we’ll be ready yet never underestimating the many challenges of Targa Newfoudland.