Today’s Leg of the Targa Newfoundland Rally was super intense. We awoke to the edges of Hurricane Leslie dumping tons of rain and high winds on us. With a majority of the storms strength south in St. Johns, the city of Gander was getting hit hard too. Mainly flat land, flooding is inevitable. But as the Targa team tracked the storm, it was forcasted to move East away from Newfoundland and the rally would go on. The stages would have us driving in the wet conditions. Our Toyo Tires performed very well in the wet. Road conditions did have some flooding and potholes, but even on the high speed straights were we had visual ahead, we could pull 130 kph and feel safe. Like some of the previous stages, the roads that did go at or parallel the ocean water could be a little sketchy. You would crest over a hill and into a left turn that had no guard rail and the water about 10 feet away. Even with our group in “Fast Tour” class, we still wanted to push the car to a comfortable limit.
Most of the stages today we would run both in and out. In total today we traveled over 400 km running in 6 different cities. Bobby’s Cove part of Stage 2 was a great smooth, fast, and flowing section. A couple hard left handers this 7.74 km section was a good test to push speed in the wet. One of the most challenging stages for the day was Point Leamington. This covered 20.22 km each way. Consisting of fast and flowing roads, it had great elevation changes, straight aways, and some crests that tested the navigators skills. With dips in corners, making sure you were fast and smooth without unsettling the suspension was key.
But without a doubt the most epic stage of the entire rally thus far was the Gander street course. Many people have talked about it and actually seeing it first hand was mind blowing. Imagine your neighborhood being shut down and cars go racing through the streets with spectators lined the roads… that was how this was. A majority was all 90 degree right or left handers with a couple straights that would take you to about 140 kph. Few sweeping turns, it was all about the apex where the streets would meet. However because of the great weather that is found here in Newfoundland, many of these corners have strong dips, drains, potholes that challenge your fast in and fast out experience. We would run the Gander stage, 2 times.
Our first time we lined up and actually botched launch control but were able to get going and up to speed. With a total of 6.90 km, the section featured 40 turns! We came through rather fast and even with wet ground, our PCCB equipped Porsche Turbo S had no issue braking. This type of driving being much more up our avenue, we finished with a time of about 5:40. After the finish line there were still groups of kids waiving and taking pics. So I decided to give them some 4 wheel donuts, a bakers dozen actually! With cheers from behind and in front of us, it was probably something they will not forget. We headed around to stage up for our second run at it.
Feeling confident about the stage, we decided to push a bit harder. The ground had dried up a bit and the lines were known. We hit the start hard apexing each of the 40 corners like it was our job. Leaving traction control on, we did come out of some turns sideways, but the PASM corrected as we hammered the gas. Coming out of one turn the back end popped up and stepped out from a severe dip in the corner. That was a butt pucker moment. Again hitting the gas, we plowed through the turns all the way to the Flying Finish. Stopping the clock, we had finished in a 5:15 which was on Targa Class pace! After finishing we jumped out of the car to take a breather as the adrenaline was still flowing. ”How could they allow this,” we thought. The Porsche took care of business and the KW Coilovers really made the handling happen. With the only issue being our factory plastic front lip popping out, we were super stoked on todays Leg!
