15th Anniversary Targa – Day 5 (Friday)

Targa Tales

Woke up to fine weather, 100% warmer in Palmerston North as Targa headed up and over the top of the Ruahine’s via the windmills into the North Wairarapa and into Hawkes Bay.

Before we went through the Manawatu Gorge it was steady rain. The water was high as I have ever seen it – wonder why it flow east to west which has to be the longer route?

SS31 was over the top of the Gorge and is aptly called Windmill Alley and having been over there before, rest assured that those windmills are huge when you are under them. It’s only 10.7 klms but it was wet.

Let’s look at which Modern was on the pace. Brent Early 5:48 – Jason Gill 5:52 – Hayden Paddon 5:57 – Stace Hopper 5:58 – Tony Quinn 6:02 – Paul Manuell 6:03

Fastest of the Classics was: Anthony Butler 06:20 – Brent Emerson 06:21 (remember that wrecked Holden I showed you yesterday?) – Nigel Patterson 06:22 – Mark Kirk-Burnnand 06:25 – Rex Alder 06:34

Good news was Barry and Carl Kirk-Burnnand were back. I spoke to Barry. He said “As we came around the corner at pace we were just passengers in the car as it just slid off at pace. We were just ‘beached’ and had not hit anything.

Yes, Leigh (Hopper) was probably right with his frozen hail theory as that part of the road was all ice. We got out of the car and next thing the Japanese Nissan came spinning towards us and frankly we did not know which way to run. It hit our front left and took off all the suspension, they then clipped the bank and rolled onto it’s roof.

I told him how I had reported his brother Chris was on the phone looking for parts. He said “What was amazing was Alert Engineering, who were looking after the Japanese car, had all the parts at our hotel at 7.30am this morning!”

SS32 was Ormondville which was to near Dannevirke and was 44klms long. Quinn scorched through in 21:21 – Procter Ford 22:00 – Paddon 21:38 – Gill 22:09 – Millener 22:10.

In the Classics it was Kirk-Burnnand 22:07 – Emerson Holden 22:18 – Butler 22:40 – Patterson 23:11 – Barry Kirk-Burnnand 23:59 and Rex Alder surprisingly back on 31:18.

The Mills brothers excursion. Photo courtesy of Tania Martin.

SS33 was a short loop near Dannevirke and Dr Nick Cooper in the Classic class 1971 Chrysler Valiant Charger was out. I was told he got into trouble off the one way bridge and had gone end for end!! They were okay but the car wasn’t nor was 20 metres of fence.

Gerry Hodges - just keeping out of big trouble. Photo courtesy of Tania Martin.

SS34 went for 44 klms, from Pongaroa to near Mangatainoka, where lunch and service was at the Tui Brewery.

Side trip.

Cars arriving reported that the Peter Millener / David Mackrell Porsche GT3 had a big off into a paddock.

Tania Martin's photos tell the Millener story.

They are doing the ‘tourism’ bit very well there and the shop selling the branded ‘stuff’ was doing very well. Late in the service it poured down so I took refuge in the bar where I had access to power for the laptop and heat from the fire.

Paul Mullins from Black Magic Television, who does the Targa videos, was interviewing Classic entry Anthony Butler. He consumes 1 litre of fuel per kilometre so with only a 60 litre tank he had filled three time that morning. Paul said that was why they painted it blue because it’s certainly not green!!

Paul had a camera in the Patterson BMW. Andrew who co-drives dad Nigel is only 15 years old. Now these in-car cameras can be a bit tricky and Paul was giving instructions to Andrew when he realised the 15 year old was probably savvy more about the technology than he was!!

Talking technology, interesting how many people were using i-Phones for accessing the live results.

Shane van Gisbergen's handywork on the 'Yeah Right' billboard.

The Paul Halford / Andy Booth Maserati Trofeo was also late. They had a flat front right which they drove on but it departed the rim with 4klms to go.

SS35 was a 17klms tight stage east of Mangatainoka. Hayden Paddon’s Targa was all over. Varying witness reports but I came to the conclusion that on a fast approach to a tightening right with a caution on it he clipped the bank and it shot across the road with the rear of the car destroyed against a large Oak Tree.

With Paddon gone Jason Gill was back in 3rd with a good buffer to 3rd, so he could take it easy. Norm, Jason’s ‘ace mechanic’ later said that by using less revs Jason had found the car had more torque.

Brother and sister pairing, Jason Gill and Jody Somervell, are all smiles now with a comfortable 3rd place. Photo courtesy of Carterton based friend and photographer Dick Koers.

Targa was now heading south and SS36 was another short one near Eketahuna Village. SS37 was 34 ks down to near Masterton and SS38 was from Gladstone to near Martinborough.

I missed these three due to media duties and had to get to the finish in Wellington but you can see the results below.
Weather was better in Wellington than it had been all day – no rain but still cold.

Targa tour line-up.

I caught up with Targa Tour leader David Walker. He was having repairs to his Peugeot 205 GTI. The fan had stopped working and they had already replaced the clutch cable. The Tour had gone very well and drivers enjoying the freedom of the open roads. They had had an amusing incident in that they could not work out why one of their participants, in a Porsche was driving in a paddock on the other side of the fence. David said “The Porsche was now a Fiesta!!”

The Glaister Golf had minor frontal damage after an excursion into the scrub and the exhaust was hanging off tie-wire.

I did not realise that the Rick Martin / Wende Bennetti 2001 Audi RS4 Wagon was out with a broken gearbox. They had taken over the third of the Turnkey Motorsport’s BMW E36 325i Coupes. Today they had gone from 47th to 32nd today.

The mighty 1964 Fiat Abarth Berlina Corsa 1000 of Mike Lowe and Phil Sutton was in and the damage was minimal to the right hand side. I had a call that it had just been on TV3 Sports News. I later watched the 10:30pm coverage and they showed it three times.

Many of the drivers and crew were talking tyre tactics for the morning.

I caught up with Andy Booth who was enjoying his first Targa – “Helleva week, just loving it. How couldn’t you in a 4.2 litre, multi-valve V8 Maserati?” They had a squeegee in the car to keep the inside of the screen clear.

Paul Halford shows their Safety Triangle that a fellow competitor managed to run over when they were changing the tyre.

Shaun Summerfield and cameraman arrived to do some out-takes for the forthcoming NZV8 season. Andy co-commentates the NZV8′s and the Aussie V8 Supercars.

The *999 car had the accident investigation photos and I saw Dr Nick’s and the Paddon car – both a mess.

No Clark Procter and no Paul Manuell at the Taranaki Wharf Finish? Just as I was departing Paul arrived. Clark’s Escort had alternator failure on the Rimatuka Hills and they had stopped to help.

Results were in and Tony Quinn/Naomi Tillett had a buffer of almost 7 minutes with an overall of 06:34:40.

Clark Procter/Tony Callaghan were on 06:41:27 and Jason Gill/Jody Somervell 06:44:22.

Good to see Leigh Hopper/Michele Bain up to 4th and Martin Dippie/Greg Ball in the Porsche GT3 up to 5th – two minutes ahead of ahead of Paul Manuell/Richard Scoular.

Big Day in and about Wellington for the last day. Forecast is good.

18 Wellington only entries for the last day.

I had a text from a Don M. in Christchurch. “Point of interest. Trevor Crowe’s Justy is the same car that holds the 2WD open record at the Race to the Sky.”

Thanks for that.

I also had a call to say that the Millener Porsche would be back on Saturday.

Keep up to date with the progressive results – click here: http://targa.tvd.co.nz/targa/public/results.aspx

Results are courtesy of the TVD operations and results management solution and vehicle tracking by TVD’s AVL solution Dash.

Modern Results

Classic Results

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