Newsletter July 2009

Targa Rotorua ….what a weekend!!

Promotion

After our run in Rally Taranaki in the Lancia Integrale (see our last newsletter), focus shifted to getting the Abarth ready for 2009 Targa Rotorua. In fact the “Honeydew List” wasn’t that long, so we thought that there would be not a lot to do. However, as it is an old car, once it was up on the hoist we found a few things that needed doing that we didn’t have on our list! This included finding a broken front kingpin (so swapped both front uprights over just to be sure) and a rust hole in the rh sill leading edge. My son Scott worked with Mark Lysaght of Central Panelbeaters and repaired the sill lickity-split, but we realised that after 15 years of hard competition it may be time next year to give the old girl a bit of a freshen up.

Full credit to the Targa organizers and our local council, as the promotion for the event was excellent; far better than previous years that’s for sure. We also scored a position on the poster as well! As this is our local event, we were asked again to help with promotion for the event. Part of this was having the car on display for the two weeks leading up to the start in the foyer of the Rotorua Convention Centre, although what the visiting Russian Ballet thought of it is unknown!

In the RCC foyer: cheap storage for a couple of weeks!

Along with front page in the papers, a local radio station ran a contest for kids, the winner getting a ride to school in the Abarth. Needless to say, I took him the loonnggg way, arriving just in time. Best comment? “It’s an old car, but it’s a reallllly COOL car!!”

With the winners and radio guy. At their school.

Day 0 - Documentation

Phil arrived up from Wellington,with my helmet now with a repaired intercom (we had problems during Dunlop Targa with inconsistent intercom, so Phil thought it might be best to fix this once and for all). Sadly Dave Jowett was stuck in Australia with work and would not be able to make it for the weekend. Also Gary Finemore had speedway commitments for Saturday, so good mate (and my original co-driver way back in the very first Targa) Steve Cannon and my son Scott stepped up to crew on Saturday. We also seconded a visiting work colleague from goddam-US-of-A for a taste of rallying NZ-style: thanks Josh!

After about 2 weeks of glorious (but cold) weather, the forecast for the Targa weekend was typically crap: cold and wet and then wet and cold. But at least it wouldn’t be like last year and freezing! So no black ice or fog to contend with, just slippery and wet roads. Before we tucked the car under a cover at Parc Ferme for the night,we went and asked the Novatel hotel for a couple of showercaps. Got some funny looks, but we worked out that a showercap fits perfectly over a DCOE carb! We fitted one over each, and that then gave confidence that even in the pouring rain overnight that we wouldn’t get water down the throats.

There was only two Fiat teams running this year: ourselves in Category 0, and Mark McCaughan and Lindsay Lyons in the 1971 Fiat 125T in Category 1. As always, we hoped to get both of us home to keep the Fiat Club finishing success at 100% as in previous years. Mark and I both don’t mind the rain, as it is a great leveler with the high horsepower cars being unable to stamp their advantage…well that’s the theory at least: these new 4wd Nissan Godzilla’s may well be the exception!

Big and Modern vs Small and Old. Phil acts as unbiased referee.

After a great Italian meal, we headed our separate ways for an early night as for sure the next day would be a tough one.

Day 1 - Rotorua environs

175km Special Stages 243km Touring

As this event is a “return to base” two day rally, each night we spend back in Rotorua. Day One focuses on roads close to Rotorua , and like last year , includes repeats of three stages during the day …very WRC-like .

The major change for this year’s Targa events is that the Classic Competition is running separate on the road from the Modern Competition. This means that no longer will we be able to piss off modern car drivers (Honda Integras, Evo’s, etc) by catching them in the stages! Damn! Under this revised format, all Classics run from slowest to fastest, followed immediately by all Moderns running fastest to slowest. This allows the organizers to get the results quicker and also to allow a better run for the outright contenders. So what does this mean for us? Well now we can only catch classic Porsches, not modern ones!

The day dawned wet, and it absolutely poured overnight so we were unsurprised to be faced with some wet roads to start with. However, as the day went on, we managed to get some sunshine for an hour or so and ran the middle stages on basically dry roads. Which was just as well, as these roads are fast! In fact to keep the speeds down (FIA requirement) of the 7 stages today, 4 of them had speed restriction zones with two of them (same stage repeated) having a 1000m one in the middle of the stage!! Crazy stuff : you are barreling along at warp10 , then have to stamp on the brakes and stay below 50kmh for the entire zone and then only get back to race speed after the zone ends. If you are caught on radar doing more than 50kmh in the zone, you get massive penalties which this year played into the overall results significantly (for example, one car got a 30minute penalty!). I realise why they need to slow the field down, but apparently my suggestion of “find roads with more corners” hasn’t worked! For our little car, seeing a massive straight bit of road means we just lose seconds/km to the larger cars. And arguably there is little skill in mashing the throttle and hanging on. But maybe that’s just me ….

The only issue we had in the morning division was with fuel. I had experimented running a mix of about 80% unleaded pump gas (98 octane) with avgas. Bad idea. Not only did the car have reduced “zing” it used about 30% more fuel in the process! Going back to straight avgas at lunch transformed the car and saw it back to its usual bark. So there’ll be no going back to that stinky yellow fuel again let me tell ya.

With Mark’s 125 also running fine, both crews were getting into the groove, but with little to do few pranks started…

Action a-plenty in Team Abarth pits….nothing to do breeds trouble…

How to inspire a team? Glue a ‘tipping’ $10 note to the dash! Thanks Lindsay!!

Highlight of the day was catching a Porsche 944 Turbo on the great Manawahe stage. As we were lining up to pass on the inside of a left hander, he lost it in front of us!!..a real tank-slapper. We then obviously waited until this little display was finished before proceeding, and despite him saying “I didn’t see you” we think he was watching his mirror and not the road, as clearly a Porsche being passed by a little Abarth would kind-a piss you off I guess ! Phil and I did have a wee chuckle!!

The last stage of the day was the stage ran first last year. The reason for the change was that last year it was so foggy and icy that 8 cars crashed. By running in the afternoon we missed the fog and ice, but boy oh boy…we caught the rain! Luckily we got through most of the stage ok (including putting on a show for the spectators at the Penny Rd intersection and getting it up on two wheels!) before the rain…and then the hail! Yuk. It made for a pretty horrible drive back into Parc Ferme, and really was a pity for the organizers as we all parked up in the main street for a fabulous car show, but with the weather, hardly anyone turned out!

Fog and Rain….Rotorua in winter

Usually at every night stop, we take all the wheels off and do a full service and check. But tonight, out in the open, with ab-so-lute-ly pissing down rain and freezing weather we took pity on the boys and decided that as all felt good, we’d just top up the gas and go and get pizza. Yes the car felt that good.

Results for the day sees us leading the Historic Category ( just) , so we were in a pretty positive mood as we put the little baby’s showercaps back on , locked her up and made our way home for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow’s weather was supposed to be better….

Day Two - Waikato

158km Special Stages 279km Touring

10 stages today, and only 3 with speed restriction zones!! Perhaps an Abarth day?

We travel out of Rotorua to the Waikato region today, with stages in and around Tokoroa, Matamata and Cambridge, finishing the event with our favorite stage Paradise Valley back in Rotorua.

Gary arrived into town at 630am to meet us at parc Ferme, and Paul Lyons kindly volunteered to crew as Scott had to work. Paul had never crewed on Targa before, so was a bit apprehensive about how busy he would be. Hmm…..which way will this go?

The day was cloudy and cool, but no sign of the heavy rain of the previous night. The first stage is a long and fast one, not really suited to the Abarth, but still we caught another Porsche! A v8 one this time!!

All was going fantastic during the morning stages, but sadly the Porsche that spun in front of us yesterday had a major ‘off’ trying to stay ahead of us today. It was a tricky corner that was wet on the inside, but Phil and I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew we weren’t behind him would he have pushed so hard? Oh well…we’ll still count it: that’s three Porsches caught and an afternoon of stages to come …heehee.

Lunch stop was at the Cambridge Village Green. All very civilized, cricket pitch and all. It was then that fellow Fiat-eer Mark comes up and says “You know we are close on the Index of Performance don’t you?”. Umm… “Huh?” . When we checked the results to lunchtime, Mark and Lindsay were in 13th place and we were in 19th, we leading our category, they second in theirs. The Index of Performance is a trophy that many competitors forget about, but the new organizers have (quite correctly in my view) promoted this with equal importance as the outright winners as it is a great leveler: it takes the age of the car, the engine capacity and competition placing and via a simple equalizing formula, compares the relative performance of all cars and rewards those that have “punched above their weight”.

“Micheal….there is nothing to do. We must clean!” Big Gary and Paul filling in time.

We have won this trophy previously, as had Mark. But this year the organizers added extra incentive (like we needed any!) with a $2500 Honda Generator as first prize! No other winners (not even outright) get prizes in Targa, so this made it a pretty big deal and hopefully will encourage more entrants in older classic cars rather than the boring modern jappers. We’ll see I guess….

Anyway , after that bit of news I guess I decided that since the car was running so well, and we were only a few stages from home, that …well….we would ‘go for it’ . Those weren’t the words Phil used though: “Drove like a lunatic…what did you guys give him for lunch?” was the cry.

With blind brows, jumps, off camber corners and the like, the arvo’s stages were great! Phil complained of only one ‘sphincter-clinching moment’when we came around a right hander which dropped away, and I was applying opposite lock in the air! Fabulous stuff!

Of course driving at 11/10ths instead of our usual 9/10ths does reduce the margin of error somewhat! Racing up to a well cautioned uphill left hander flat out in 5th, with Phil calling “Gravel on corner…lots of gravel” I saw the tv camera and, naturally, tried to get it up on two wheels. This usually works fine: except on gravel. No grip. None at all. Not even a little bit. Eeeks!! On the brakes we slid directly for the bank. Getting off the brakes just made us slide faster by the way! You will note from the sequence below the complete lack of brake smoke: this is because the tyres are in contact with terra-looser and not terra-firma!!


Whoopsie!!!

Hooking reverse to the cheers from the crowd, we scooted away chuckling to ourselves hoping Mark would also lose some time at that corner. Curses he didn’t…in fact did a perfect job! Well done mate.

No one likes a show-off!!

The final service was in Matamata, and it was there a young lad came up waving a sign at us. I was quite touched. No-one ever called us “You Rock!” before!!

So how exactly do you “rock” ????

As everything was still PERFECT with the car, Gary and Paul simply fueled the car and us and were done! We suggested that they may as well go and spectate at the next stage: that’s how confident we felt. The little baby was still performing awesome…hell didn’t even use a drop of oil!!

This meant we had made it to the start of my local stage, and my all-time favourite, ParadiseValley. It seems that half of Rotorua was out watching, so there is only one thing to do: go go go!!! Phil was rather quiet most of the stage, but did suggest “that was lucky” once or twice. We managed a time 7 seconds quicker than last year , which let me tell you is pretty damn impressive in an old car after two days racing !

We arrived at the finish, and received our Finishers Medals to continue our unbroken record of starting and finishing every event. We had a well-deserved beer in hand as we applauded Mark and Lindsay for bringing the 125T home as well, making another 100% finish rate for FIAT!! Take that Honda!

Results

What a car! In this its 15th year of competition , I cannot think of another 45 yearold car that could survive 800km of flat-out racing around the roads like we have in NZ and perform so faultlessly. Couple this with catching and passing three Porsches,made the weekend fantastic!

Come the results, and after a lengthy delay while various protests in the modern category were heard (mainly for speeding in the HIS zones), we were stoked to have won our Historic Category again!!

And our table was again collecting the silverware! Next,Mark and Lindsay stepped up to a well deserved Category One win! We passed the leading Torana on a tow-rope on the way to the last stage, so knew that if Mark kept it on the blackstuff he would do well!! Then fellow Fiat Club member Grant Shirley (who has tilted a tad towards the dark side and now races a Honda) won his Category.

But it wasn’t over yet. The final awards of the night were the Index of Performance. It was with pride that Team ENZED Abarth accepted this prestigious award and the fabulously efficient Honda generator that was the prize: this will mean that Gary can make the coffee quicker for us !!

So there we have it for Targa Rotorua 2009:

1st Historic Category

1st Index of Performance

19th Classic

46th Outright

Passed 3 Porsches and caused one to crash.

All in all a FABULOUS weekend!! We are getting some new decals made for the door tops though: like them?

Special thanks our extended crew for the weekend: Steve, Josh,Scott, Paul and of course Gary. I am not really sorry you had an easy weekend!! Let’s hope to do it again eh!

We certainly did our best to promote our sponsors, without who we would not be here of course. Big ‘ups ‘to Team ENZED, SANDVIK, BONFIGLIOLI and CASTROL. In today’s economic environment, your continued support of our Team is vastly appreciated and we hope to continue to give you guys more than expected in return.

To quote a new friend of mine: “You Rock!”