Jim Kenzie's The Driver's Seat

Targa Newfoundland - Three-Fifths Done

Hard to believe we're over half-done here at Targa Newfoundland 2012.

Hard to believe because our start times are so early, I have to get to bed so early that I have hardly had any time to even try to blog about it!

Our Kia Optima Turbo is dead-stock apart from safety equipment, and the allowable springs, dampers, wheels and tires. It looks huge in this field that seems to be mostly Porsches and Subarus, and we're dead-certain it's the only car in the field with a back-up camera.

You see, visibility to the rear of any race/rally car is poor because of the spider's web of roll cage components. Not a problem because normally, you don't do a lot of backing up in a race/rally car

But everybody who watches me back into tight spots in the hockey and curling rinks where we park the cars overnight thinks I'm a magician - and here I am, revealing the secret of my trick.

The car also has Air-Con, Sirius satellite radio, cruise control - what every full-bodied rally car ought to have.

Yeah yeah, the purists do scoff - but on those long transits, everyone wishes they were in my car.

It's also very quick, once the Turbo gets the 276 horses all galloping along.

We would like more ground clearnace - the Eibach springs are some 50 percent stiffer than stock, but are about 30 mm shorter, so we are bottoming out on some of the larger bumps. A skid plate under the engine means we're doing no damage - as far as we know.

The main drawback of the Optima Turbo as a rally car is that it only comes with a six-speed automatic transmission. It does have a 'Sport' mode with paddle shifters on the steering column, but these seem to have a mind of their own, not always grabbing the gear I want.

So sometimes, it's a struggle pulling away from slower corners.

My navigator Brian Bourbonniere from Halifax and I have an arrangement - he tells me nothing about our results. I don't know what position we're in, whether we make our base times, or even our 'trophy' times.

The theory here is that I can only drive so fast no matter what, and if I knew for example that I was maybe just a bit ahead or just a bit behind somebody, I might try to drive harder, and we all know how that ends...

You of course can find out where we and everybody else stand if you like at www.targanewfoundland.com.

Please, just don't tell me!

There's also a daily video blog at www.targanewfoundlandnews.com. You might recognize the guy doing the voice-over...

You'd have trouble convincing anyone from Florida or Louisiana that Hurricane Leslie blew through here yesterday - not a house trailer sitting in a low-hanging tree to be seen. It was gorgeous - sunny, warm, with just a few fluffy clouds.

And the heavy rains washed a lot of the gravel and dirt off the roads, so that was a plus.

It's Marystown and the Burin Peninsula Thursday, then back to St. John's Friday.

 

Clever Marketing or Lucky Break?

I don't know if you're following the Olympics (or even give a flyin' wahoo; I am not, and don't particularly, respectively...).

BTW, spoiler alert - if you DON'T want to know who won the 100m Gold Medal because you'll watch it on PVR later, quit now! Otherwise, scroll down...

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I was just told by someone who is and does (respectively) that Usain Bolt of Jamaica won as expected, breaking his own Olympic record and - here's the good part - the first commercial after his victory was for the Chevy Volt!

Bolt for Volt!!

Now, did GM's clever marketing types set that up??

Or did they just get lucky?

I guess you'd have to call Mr. Bolt 'electrifying' - bet he's never heard THAT one before hahahahahahaha...

Sorry...

And you might have noticed in the 'Categories' for this blog posting, I included 'Current Affairs'.

Please, somebody stop me before someone gets hurt...

UEFA versus NASCAR

OK, so this is a blog on cars.

But some people think NASCAR racing is boring - round and round they go, where they crash, nobody knows...

So I figure that opens it up.

As a general sports fan, I thought I'd better watch the biggest sports event in the world (until the London Olympics open later this month).

The UEFA Euro Cup.

In the parlance of the text-iverse / tweet-iverse:

O.

M.

G.

Really, people.

Grass is growing out there, and you're missing all the action!

Paint is drying out there, and it has to be watched!

Did I really hear that one Spanish player made four hundred and forty-five passes in this tournament? Most of them laterals or towards his own goal?

The first shot on goal in the final - a decent chance from out front - after ten minutes of play?

Six shots in total on the poor Italian goalie, four of which went in?

Casillas of Spain may be the best goalie in soccer today. He had to stop four shots. Martin Brodeur should have it so easy.

And don't even get me started on the diving.

They don't even know how to celebrate the win in soccer. Everyone just milling about for half an hour, their kiddies running around aimlessly on the field, no formal handshake between the teams.

Nobody does that better than hockey.

In the "credit where credit's due" department, there does still seem to be a role for the little guy in soccer. Some of these dudes didn't look much more than 5'8", 160 pounds. Legs like Colossus, but you'd expect that.

And what they can do with their feet is amazing.

One aspect of the celebration they did get right - the guy with the engraving tool was on the spot and 'Espana' was put on the trophy before it was handed over.

I get it - soccer is popular.

Celine Dion sells a lot of records; it proves nothing.

I understand that in the third world, they don't have ice, and can't afford anything but running shoes.

Maybe not even running shoes.

But once you CAN afford skates - people, move on.

No wonder there's so much rioting at soccer games - there's nothing to watch down there.

With a few minutes to go, a 4 - 0 lead in soccer is like 10 - 0 in hockey. But Spain kept pressing for another, with Italy a man down due to injury (only three subs? What's up with that?...)

Even Don Cherry would be right on this count - the game is over; don't run up the score.

Nothing 'beautiful' about that aspect of the game.

The four goals probably set some sort of record. The usual inevitable 0 - 0 score (as it happened, the result of the Spain - Portugal semi-final) indicates that scoring a goal in soccer is one of the most difficult things to do in all of sport, never mind that the net is about the size of Rhode Island.

So how do they settle ties?

They stand on the dock and kick the ball into the water.

Twenty guys run their butts off for 90 minutes (the two goalies don't run all that much) and it's pretty much always decided by a goal post (they actually keep a stat on "attempts against woodwork"'! You could look it up...) or by the goalie guessing wrong and the shooter chipping the ball over his prone body.

Shoot-outs ('penalties' in the soccer vernacular) of course make even less sense in soccer than they do in hockey. My daughter has a vastly better suggestion, for either sport - a two-on-one, thirty seconds to score, then the other team gets its chance. Three chances each, then one at a time until a winner is declared.

Brilliant. More like the Canadian Football League's tie-breaking system - genuine football (or in these cases, soccer or hockey) plays.

Actually, they could probably just start soccer games like that, save us all 90 minutes of boredom and we could all get home in time to watch the NASCAR race.

Let the flaming begin!

 

Carroll Shelby

As every car enthusiast knows by now, Carroll Shelby passed away last Thursday.

 

We're saddened if not entirely shocked; after all, Carroll was 89 years old - a good innings by any reckoning - and lived his entire life under the constant threat of a weak heart.

 

Biologically, at least - he was one of the longest-surviving heart transplants, and also had a donated kidney from his son.

 

But there was never anything lacking in his metaphorical heart.

 

His racing and car-building exploits are well-known; I'll just add a couple of personal anecdotes.

 

Two years ago, local vintage car guru Richard Pickering organized what we think was the largest collection of Shelby vehicles ever assembled under one roof. Shelby himself was flown up from his California home, and several of his long-standing colleagues and buddies, including racer/driving instructor Bob Bondurant and journalist David E. Davis Jr., also attended.

 

I don't know if anyone had ever seen Shelby in tears before, but he was at that event - it was an unforgettable evening.

 

Many more years ago than I can possibly remember but it must have been early- to mid-1980s, Chrysler brought Shelby to the Media Preview for their new model-year line-up, to give journalists rides around the Chelsea Michigan proving grounds in his Dodge Shelby Charger.

 

As I strapped myself in for my turn, I complimented Shelby on the fact that his version of the Charger was one of the first cars to have dual retractable cup holders.

 

“Shoot,” said Shelby approximately, “all a man needs in a car is a back seat for his [fuddle-duddling], a rack for his rifle, and a place to put his coffee and beer!”

 

That's product planning in a nutshell...

 

A bit later in our drive, we passed a Chrysler test driver whose job was simply to put development miles on a Plymouth TC3. Shelby glanced in the mirror and saw that the Plymouth driver had obviously seen who was driving the Charger, and had picked up his pace.

 

Shelby grinned at me. “Looks like he wants to play!” (Wish I could type in a Texas accent...).

 

Now, on the back half of the Chelsea circuit is a series of whoop-de-doos - three short sharp hills. If you wonder where Car and Driver magazine gets those cover shots with the car way up in the air, wonder no more.

 

Shelby gunned the car up the first one, flying off the crest, not touching the back side of the hill at all as it returned from near-orbit.

 

The car slammed into the pavement at the bottom of that first hill, then flew off the top of the second one.

 

WHAM - we landed again.

 

The third hill has a little right-hand kink, right at the crest. Shelby took to the gravel shoulder before launching, so that when we landed, we were still on the pavement.

 

As the car settled down, he looked in the mirror again, grinned again, and said to me, “Looks like he don't wanna play no more!”

 

The poor Plymouth guy had probably got out of his car and walked back to the pits, never to get behind a wheel again.

 

Rest in Peace, Carroll. We will never see your like again.

 

Truth in Advertising?

One of my Usual Suspect colleagues, a very experienced journo but not one of the crazy ones, had a 'moment' on the Ford event in Portland a week ago.

He isn't nameless, but he will remain thus here. No need to embarrass him - it's not like he's one of my direct competitors!...

He spotted a can of '5-Hour' energy drink at one of the coffee stops on the ride and drive route.

He figured, "Hey, they sponsor a NSACAR race car. I'll give it a try."

Suitably energized, he jumped right into one of the Mustang test cars - and promptly ran into a wall...

I didn't hear about this until we were on the shuttle bus heading to the airport, and I was only able to see the car briefly out the window. They wouldn't stop the bus to let me take a photo of it, but it looked like he smacked an outside wall, dinging the right door and both fenders, and taking out the right side-view mirror.

As they say in NASCAR, if you ain't rubbin', you ain't racing...

 

Targa Newfoundland goes Global

In case you are among the three or four people in the world who have not seen the video of the Ferrari Enzo going for a swim in Marystown Newfoundland last week, here ya go.

Among the many amazing things about this incident is the incredible calmness of driver/owner Zahir Rana after the fact. He had just very possibly toasted his million-plus-dollar car (subsequent investigation suggests that fixing the damage to the car - salt-water and electronics really do not play nice together - will run into six figures, none of them to the right of the decimal point...) yet all he can talk about is how it's just a car, no-one was hurt, how wonderful the entire event was, and how much he's looking forward to coming back next year.

Prior to the start of Targa, Zahir told me that the FIA-approved roll cage he had custom-built in Germany for his Lamborghini Gallardo arrived the day before the transport truck which was to bring his cars from Calgary to Newfoundland was leaving, and he didn't have time to install it in the Lambo.

Even then, let alone in retrospect, he agreed that this was probably a Good Thing, that getting a feel for the rally before committing to doing it for real was the right way to do it.

Although this was Zahir's first rally, his little swim showed that he has learned the first rule of rallying - although the car did go off on the left side of the road, he did get it rotated 180 degrees so the co-driver's side actually hit the water first.

Which is perhaps the most amazing aspect of that little video - the enthusiasm of co-driver Roland Linder. He can't wait to come back too.

As I've been telling you for ten years, until you experience Targa for yourself, you just can't fully understand it.

Start planning your budget for next year...

Targa Newfoundland 2011: it's a big - 30 - for us...

I'm not sure where the expression '- 30 -' comes from, but it's the traditional newspaper way of saying 'this story is over.'

And when it comes to Targa Newfoundland 2011, our story is over.

We're done.

Despite heroic efforts on the part of our crew, we just couldn't solve the electronic gremlins that afflicted our little car.

Fellow competitor Andrew Comrie-Picard commented that this was the first time our team had ever had a 'mechanical' at Targa.

He's right - in nine events, with three different MINIs, they've always been as reliable as a brick through a plate glass window.

Sure, we had a couple of flat tires in Year Two (2003), and I threw the car into the woods at 160 km/h in Year Seven (2008). But neither of them was the car's fault.

The worst issue we ever had was one year - maybe Year Three, 2004? - when our tire pressure warning system was giving us 'false negatives' - saying we had low tire pressure when in fact we didn't.

No biggie.

The Check Engine Light and intermittent non-starting issues this year presumably were symptoms of a deeper problem. And when the electronics decided we were 'tampering' with the system, it turned on the security lock-out function, and we couldn't even do any further diagnostics on it.

We had access to another John Cooper Works Edition Cooper S for parts, but the security module from that car did not fit our car. The MINI Challenge car is a very special unit...

At least, that's the best explanation for which I have the technical competence to deliver.

I'm sure when the car returns home and a full examination is done we'll discover the problem. But in a parking lot in Gander Newfoundland in the rain at 3 a..m. - well, there's only so much you can do.

Much thanks from me (second from the right) to our crew - from left to right, Alain Lauziere, Crew Chief; Brian Bourbonniere, co-driver; Kevin Abe, support/technician.

We're off now to watch the Gander town stage which is always a hoot - to drive anyway.

The MINI always looked good through there, or so people always told me.

It'll be bittersweet to watch others do it.

I'll be flying home tomorrow, so this will be my last on-site blog posting, although I will be returning Saturday for the Gala Awards Banquet.

Won't be taking any hardware home from this one, so I'll show you again what we reaped last year...

Targa Newfoundland - Day One

It was an eventful day to start the Tenth Anniversary Targa Newfoundland.

Several serious "offs"; I'll direct you to the Targa Newfoundland web site for more details on those.

Our electrical gremlins returned with a vengeance. The car started fine this morning, and ran to and through the first stage without problems.

OK, other than the slow driver...

But in the second stage, the dreaded Check Engine light reappeared, and we lost what felt like about half of our power.

The light went out again, the power returned, and it was OK the rest of the morning.

OK, other than that slow driver...

The car started fine again after lunch, but following a 40 km transit stage, the car would NOT start. We bump-started it, but began getting various other warning lights. We tried jamming the battery from the big X5 Diesel tow car into the MINI - again it started, but only ran briefly.

So we missed the last two stages of the day.

Crew members from Bob Pacione's team and the Soldier On team jumped in to help. On one side of modern technology, these gallant warriors were downloading wiring diagrams via satellite phones, accessing diagnostic web sites through computers plugged into portable battery packs - all pretty amazing.

Then again, if the car had a points-and-condenser ignition, we probably would have got going again!

As it turned out, the last stage of the day was washed out due to some of those 'offs', so we're 'only' one stage behind. We won last year's Open Division missing two stages.

But the competition is much tougher this year!

Still, it's a long week, and it's way too early to give up.

As I type, crew chief Alain Lauziere is heading to St. John's on a parts chase. We'll let you know tomorrow how successful he was.

*****

I have updated yesterday's blog with the link to the web site where you can learn more about Darryl Deagle, a Targa Newfoundland veteran who died this year in a tragic parachute jumping crash, and about the Registered Education Savings Plan that has been set up for his 10-month old daughter Sophia. That link is here.

Targa Newfoundland - Fund-Raiser Supreme

I mentioned earlier that Targa generates loads of tourism dollars for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

It also generates loads of money for various charities.

For the last two years, the official charity of Targa has been The Autism Society of this province.

But many cars run to support their own charities, most of them involving children.

There’s a special fund-raiser going on this year, to build a Registered Education Savings Plan for 10-month old Sophia Deagle.

He father Darryl was a high-spirited, push-the-boundaries type of man, who initially came to Targa as crew chief for an MG-B which crashed heavily in a Prologue practice run.

But the Halifax native/Moncton resident was intrigued by the entire event, and for the next four years, he was co-driver for Jim Turner of Newburgh New York, most recently in Turner’s 1990 Mustang GT.

In addition to Sophia, his wife Crystal, and automotive speed, Deagle’s other love was parachute jumping.

Not the normal jump-out-of-a-plane-and-pop-your-chute stuff, but a relatively recent wrinkle called the ‘wingsuit’.

In these suits, you become as close to a bird as I guess it’s possible to become. You jump out of the airplane, spread your ‘wings’, and fly.

Deagle was an expert at this, having completed over 80 jumps. He was also an instructor, sharing his love of the sport and his knowledge of its techniques with others.

This past August 13, on a ‘normal’ flight, he found himself blown off-course. As he approached a landing, he saw that he might come in contact with a fence. He tried to bank into a turn, but lost the ‘current’, and crashed to the ground.

Turner says that Deagle was about 200 feet up, apparently not high enough to deploy the auxiliary emergency chute. He died instantly.

Rick MacLeod of Sault Sainte Marie, a long-time Targa campaigner, has known his share of adversity - he contracted Multiple Sclerosis several years ago, but continues to compete in Targa, raising funds for the MS Society.

He is also the father of three young children, and realized that little Sophia was going to need a lot of the help that Daddy was not going to be able to provide.

Hence, the Sophia Deagle RESP drive.

To learn more about Deagle and to contribute to Sophia's RESP, visit Darryl Deagle's web site here.

*****

Today was ‘Prologue’ day, three short practice runs to get the cobwebs out (of car, driver and co-driver). They don’t count in the results, but the speeds the cars attain in these runs help the organizers determine the starting order for tomorrow’s first day of competition.

Just about every year, somebody Blows Up Real Good or crashes Big Time in Prologue, being caught out by Newfoundland’s tricky roads, an overflow of adrenaline, or a bloated ego.

They ignore the warnings given to them by the organizers, by fellow veteran competitors, by their spouses - by just about everybody.

I initially didn’t think anybody had gone off in anger this year, but at dinner, I heard that someone did come to grief at the end of the first Prologue stage. Don’t know how serious the damage was.

There were a few ‘mechanicals’, but little major carnage that I could see.

Problem - in the first Prologue run, I could feel our MINI Challenge car running just a bit flat, not giving me the power it usually does.

During the transit stage after the hot run, I noticed a ‘check engine’ light on the dash. It probably came on during the stage, but you're a bit too busy at that time to notice much of anything but the road ahead.

A few km down the road, I could feel the power come back in, and the light went out.

Obviously, some sort of transient condition.

We didn’t have time to do much diagnosis out on the course, so we ran the other two practice stages as is.

As soon as I launched for Stage Two, the light came back on and the power dropped off, and things didn't right themselves until we were done Stage Three, and the car was running cool again.

We took the car to Frank Howard’s sparkling-brand-new MINI dealership in St. John’s, and dragged tech Justin Crank away from his own car - he is also competing in Targa - to see if he could figure it out.

As I type, he and our own techie Kevin Abe are investigating. It may be a duff spark plug, maybe just a bit of bad gasoline.

Even if we’re down a little on power, we’ll be there tomorrow.

But as I said, for now, I gotta get some sleep!

Targa Newfoundland reaches tenth birthday

When Belleville-based public relations consultant Doug Mepham and myself completed the five-day Targa Tasmania car rally back in the spring of 2001, we mused on the impossibility of doing anything like that in North America.
Have the police close down public roads and tell you to drive faster?

Yeah, right.

But Doug dropped a bug (actually, my Wheels story on Targa Tasmania) in the metaphorical ear of St. John's Newfoundland motorsport enthusiast Bob Giannou, he took the idea to the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, and eighteen months and a huge pile of work later, we had our first Targa Newfoundland.

Next week, we'll be running our tenth.

Holy Cow.

Targa Newfoundland is, among other things, the most fun you can have in a car with your clothes on.

On top of the thrill of driving performance cars 'the way they were meant to be driven' to use one of the event's mottoes, you see some of Canada's most spectacular scenery (although often at a pace which prevents you from enjoying it much) and meet without doubt Canada's most colourful and friendly citizens.

Many of your fellow competitors - from Newfoundland, from RoC (Rest of Canada), from the US, from Europe, from the Turks and Caicos Islands, from Australia, from darn-near everywhere - become life-long friends too.

We even had one wedding at Targa.

Not to mention (although I will) that Targa brings some six to ten millions of tourism dollars to the province, at a time when most everyone else has gone home - the timing of Targa coincides with the year's last ferry back from Argentia near St. John's to Nova Scotia.

For the ninth year in a row, I'll be competing in a MINI (Mepham and I did Year One in his 1971 Volvo 123 GT, the same car we ran Tasmania).

For the seventh year in a row, my navigator will be Brian Bourbonniere from Lawrencetown Nova Scotia, without doubt (in my mind anyway) the best co-driver in the event.

The guy reads my mood through my breathing in the headsets in our helmets, fer cryin' out loud.

We'll be in the same MINI Challenge race car which took us to victory in the Open Division last year (our third such victory in six years). Crew Chief Alain Lauziere has fixed the transmission mount which allowed our driveshaft to part company with the hub on the second-last stage of last year's event, so when we win again this year (ahem...) it won't be by me carrying the steering wheel across the finish line.

If for no other reason than due to our less-than-conventional finish last year, you now must actually DRIVE across the line to qualify for a placing.

Hey - we don't make the rules; we just bend them.

And then they change them.

If you haven't already got your entry in, it's probably too late for this year.

If you are a motorsport participant at any level, Targa Newfoundland must BECOME your Bucket List for next year.

Yes, it is that cool.

Expensive?

Maybe.

But compared to a season of racing just about anything else, in just about any other series, it's cheap at twice the price.

If you can't get down this year to see the event for yourself, you can follow our team's progress on this blog. I'll be posting as often as the somewhat dodgy Internet access in the hinterlands of The Rock and my sleep schedule allow.

To follow us and everybody else, check out Targa's own website.

We'll also let you know when the TV Special will be airing - probably some time in January 2012.