Leg 2 – The lines are now drawn and our Targa STI is growing its claws

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,

Then, you 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.

• Also: Subaru Rally Team Canada at Targa Newfoundland 2009
• Also: Pre-Targa hoopla, registration and last-minute fixes

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 promised.

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.

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.

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 Trauttmansdorfff 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.