Time to start home.  Tomorrow we board the 16 hour argentia ferry to nova scotia.

Fastest speed on the rally for us 119kph

We started out in first today, surprisingly.  We held on through some tough sections.  We finished first in GT. 

The old Mustang (not dads) rolled.  Noone injured.  She finished.

We won.  Final scores tomorrow.  We are wearing champagne.

The coveted finishers medal we gots.   The car isn’t damaged at all.

One more day and hopefully the coveted finishers medal.

We started in 2nd place and I think we held it.  We may have moved closer to the leaders.  Unlikely we will overtake them, veterans who have won it. 10 sections today.  Our favorite of the rally ran 2 times today: Bonavista. It is a tight technical section in town with 29 turns in 5k.  2 second windows tomorrow and we finish in st johns.

Standing on the headland at the mouth of Little Catalina Bay, heather and lichens underfoot clinging to mammoth lodes of shale, the rock crazily tilted off level and edges shredding away looking like blown-down straw.

The wind has eased, and it carries the sound of the GT40 over from town, 2 km away, as the Ford hurtles along the sea road. You see the blue splash gain speed, then the howl of the Gurney-Westlake V8’s open intake stacks follows in a few seconds.

29 turns in five kilometers. Starts at Cemetery Hill and winds down to the waterfront. Along avenues, alleys, and paths, passing picket fences and garden sheds almost close enough to touch. “Hard left into hard right into severe right then CAUTION steep downhill left at tee – don’t cut”, the turns come as fast as your co-driver can call ’em out.

We ran it twice. Second time around, the pavement was covered with black tracks laid down by the Targa cars; and there were hundreds of townspeople watching, cheering the circus.

Started in 4th.  We think we zeroed today.  Windows tighten to 3 seconds tomorrow.  gt40 back in operation.  Leaders in our class wen t off. No injuries.   Car in 3rd got turned around and went countercourse.  We will see what results are tom.orrow.

Chocolate store in trinity N L.  Got our NL geocache today.

We’ve had a couple of long stages so far, 14 – 24 kms.  If you consider the logistics of closed-road rallying, you’ll see that such a stage will be run fairly fast — otherwise, the length of time that locals will be locked out of the road is intolerable.  So we’ve run a couple of long fast stages so far.  And they’re not going well.

My usual method for running on time in touring rallies is to reach ‘on-time’ state early, and then try to minimize speed changes. This has us taking corners rather harder than normal, and running straights rather slower than normal. I tried that on the first long/fast stage yesterday. It was rubbish. The road was wet, hilly, and winding, and the average speed was brisk. It took 2 km just to reach the ‘on-time’ state, and holding it via the technique described above was flat scary.

So, adjusting, I reverted to a late, heavy braking + hearty acceleration strategy. It worked fine on the final stage last night, feeling much better. That stage was mostly downhill, though, and I found new limits today.

AssignedSpeed (CAST): 110 kph.    MaxSpeed (not to exceed):   130 kph.

That’s a pretty small over-cast window… if you brake for curves, and then accelerate to max speed, the time error display crawls….. back …. toward…. perfect. In fact, with the start leading to a steep twisting uphill section, I was going further behind right away. I knew the BMW would do 130+ in third, and so I stopped shifting. The curves could all be taken in third, and when the road straightened – I just took it to around 6,000 rpm and held it there.

But I never caught up, not in 24 km.  We crossed the line at least 12 down.

So what next?
I assume I need to carry more speed through the corners, but as yet I’m not ready to push harder in that direction.
They had a radar gun check station on a straight stretch, and there’s a $250 fine for busting the limit.  Despite that threat — with a closed road, after all — it may be time for fourth.

 

p.s.  The N52  jumps to 6k pretty quick, and it sounds great. But dang, does it drink fuel when you run like that.