Friday, Sept. 19, 2003

Leg 4: Thrifty Car Rental Heritage - Clarenville to Marystown

It's a long two hour drive from Clarenville down the Burin Peninsula to the day's first stage through residential Marystown. Once there, Targa drivers are treated to a course that travels past family homes, apartment buildings and some light industrial areas. At one point the route passes under a bridge packed with spectators, from which much of the course can be viewed.

The next stage has long flat stretches where cars can be wound out in top gear, but with a couple of tight turns in the villages of Garnish and Frenchman's Cove. Stage 4.3 is 11 km of driving along a road cut into the rock face next to the ocean, ending with a drive through the town of Burin. Lunch is at the Old Colony trust building there, another great meal of typical Newfoundland fare.

After lunch we ran back out on the same stage that brought us into Burin, ending in Mortier. That was followed by two very tight town stages in Grand Bank (6.6 km) and Fortune (4.4 km). A feature of the Grand Bank stage is a short jaunt along the wharf where fishing boats tie up to unload their catch. Several cars oversteered onto the wharf, bumping rear tires against the concrete barrier that keeps things from rolling into the harbor. The BMW 2002tii of Jarvis and Jarvis slid straight into that barrier and bent the front suspension; the tii was out for the remainder of the event, but the team returned in a BMW X5.

The final two stages of the day were 4.2 and 4.1 run in reverse, ending at the hockey arena in Marystown.

It has been a day where mechanical fatigue is showing on many of the cars. Goeff Fowlow's Jaguar XK-120 has suffered a water pump failure, and the alternator has given up on Ben Thomas' Saturn. Both are able to make repairs and return later in the day, but have missed several stages and taken timing penalties. Tom Silver's 1965 Mustang and Rick McLeod's supercharged 2000 Mustang both show indications of blown head gaskets. Sean Hyland's 2001 Mustang sounds like hell due to a hole in the headers. Jerry Churchill missed a turn in Marystown and has crunched up the front air dam on his Subaru WRX. The Honda CRX of Ian Crammond and Branko Brkovitch became locked in 2nd gear and the engine balked at running in the upper revs for long distances, eventually putting a connecting rod through the block. Several teams are having to replace expensive alloy wheels damaged by hitting curbs.

Local garages look like some sort of automotive triage, and many crews worked late into the night to stay in the running for the final run to St. John's.