Targa Rally Day 4 – Meet Part of #TeamNissanTarga

Let’s start with my driving partner Michel Crepault.

A 30-year veteran of the auto journalism world, Michel founded and publishes L’Annuel de L’Automobile (Annual Auto Guide), a 14-year old, 700+ page book that details every vehicle available for sale the upcoming model year. Click that link to buy it.

We’re fast becoming a very solid team, and I’m lucky because right now, he’s doing our mapping homework alone, so I can post this.  Merci Michel xo

Our team’s entry into the fastest category is Nissan’s Juke, Nismo edition.

Driving the Juke is Jim Kenzie.

You know Jim, I’ve introduced you before because he’s awesome.  And good at Targa too, having competed in all 13 of them, and winning 3 times, phft.

Part of that winning us because of his navigator, Brian Bourbonniere.

That’s his racing suit that he wears in the passenger seat, and is so good at navigating he once completed a rally without making a single mark on the paper, handing it back to the rally master as it was given to him.  That is ridicuoulsy difficult.

No matter how many questions I pester him with, only patience in return.  And I have a _lot_ of questions.

And this is Cathy Cole, the glue of the team. She herds us around and takes care of logistics, and when you say to her, “Cathy, can you please…” she’s already thought of it, and pulls it out of her purse.

Helping her adhere my sticker to her binder is Mario, our tech, who I’ll introduce you to in another post, along with Danny, Michael, Jenn and Didier.

We’re a solid team!

Because there’s a lot of laughing, and everyone gets along really well, which considering there’s so many of us, how rare is that. Exactly. #TeamNissanTarga

 

 

Targa Rally Day 4 – a Fast Update

Hi hi –

Have 3 half-done posts here (meet some of the Nissan Team / Tech and a Car Show / Learned the TerraTrip and that’s Important)… but it’s 11pm and my eyes are burning. I’ll finish and publish them tomorrow.

Itinerary is: breakfast is at 7am, then all drivers must report to the HQ at 8, we convoy downtown to a mandatory driver’s meeting, and then it’s Prologue – a practice race day. We’ll be racing 3 stages, in full gear and just like the real race, only difference is it doesn’t count towards our score.

Michel and I still have navigation work to do before the race, so I’ll do my best to blog but that must come first.

Until then, here’s me driving inside a building, I was SO EXCITED. When do you ever get to drive a car inside anything? (only once before for me)

TTYT

 

 

Targa Rally Day 3 – that’s Racing School Complete

More class room sitting-still stuff this morning, then we drove a stage in a convoy, stopping every so often to walk the road and learn.

One of the scariest, most crash-y corners

Whaddya doing Danny? Huh Danny? Danny!

My cockpit.

From what I can tell, this is a game of endurance and patience.

The former phft got it. The latter, oh no guys.

It’s pretty god-y here eh.

Thank you for a lovely lunch ladies!

Then we simulated a stage, with a timer and everything.

First helmet run for #TeamNissanTarga

At the day’s end, Michel and I unpacked and repacked our car, OCD styles.

That’s the cabin of a winning team there.

We also practiced opening our triangles like they told us to, but it really wasn’t that hard guys?!

Here’s to no one opening their triangles next week.

kk I’m off to search for a time distance speed app for my phone, TTYT

 

 

Targa Rally Day 4 – This is the Rally Racing Line

Right down the middle, on the yellow.

It’s different from a track, where you try get a couple wheels over the apex (which I recently discovered a knack for, when Pfaff invited me to track their Porsches [video])

And no wheels off the road, EVER.
Or in rally speak, “Do not cut”.  Big points off.

Not just because it drags gravel onto the road, making it slippery for the following competitor, but because a pothole can make things go west real fast.

 

Even a small pothole like this.