Written by:
Kevin Krefting
We started the day chasing the win in class 9, and were hoping to climb up the order in Modern, but we were out of competition right after lunch. As I said in my post yesterday, it happens that fast.
The day started out strong for us. The order on the road was re-shuffled overnight to put us right behind the Mazda RX-8 ahead of us in the standings. The morning began with a long transit out to our first stage. The small fishing village of Harbor Mille has fewer residents than there are organizers, marshals, competitors, and crew running Targa. We run a stage heading into and back out of the town, a series of roads that offer amazing high-speed switchbacks up and down the coast, punctuated by a tight and twisting town stage in the middle of the route.
On our first run through the stage, everything went perfect. After running a brisk pace in the high-speed section of the stage, we managed to run the entire town error free and at a nearly ideal pace. Heading out of the tight section and into some of the fastest roads of the event, we managed to carry 4th and even 5th gear through the majority of the corners. We managed to take no penalties despite a difficult base time, but having just changed to new brake pads the night before we rolled into time control with smoke billowing out of the wheels! That's certainly one way to bed in new pads.
The run back out of town was not as successful for us, but was still a joy to drive. Having to make a time almost 20 seconds shorter was a guarantee to collect points. Although we were even faster on the high-speed sections, the town was a little harder to navigate with gravel now strewn across most of the junctions from the rally cars ahead of us on the road.
A fast, flowing stage in Mooring Cove was a brief segue into the next city stage in the event, Marystown. Very similar to the night before in Clarenville, Marystown lets us race through real neighborhoods with lots of spectators, including a run under an overpass where large crowds gather. The stage was going very well until I misunderstood a call and went to the right of a Y-junction when I should have gone left. This forced me to back-track, and gave us yet more penalty time. We were not the only one, as early drivers and heavy winds conspired to pull the marshal's tape that lines the roads free.
As we ran through the stage, we saw a sad sight – our friend and last year's overall winner Glen Clarke parked at the side of the road, the motor in his Porsche 911 blown.
READ THE INTRO HERE
READ THE ABOUT THE MAZDA TEAM HERE
READ LEG 1 STORY HERE
READ LEG 2 STORY HERE
READ LEG 3 STORY HERE
