The Targa Newfoundland race concluded on Saturday, with Lexus GS 450h making a late push to finish 6th place. Here's the summary written by Team Lexus' driver, Mark Lachapelle:

Team Targa Lexus chose to make a very different entrance and arrival. Co-driver Alan Ockwell and I simply drove up in total silence, running on electric power only. For us, it was the best proof that you can run hard for six days (counting the three Prologue stages last Sunday), make it to the finish and still be as environmentally-friendly and quiet as possible, in a modern car. Not to mention competitively.

We finished sixth overall and became repeat winners in the Hybrid division, of course, but we also finished a virtual third in the Modern division with our two-ton-plus hybrid-powered sedan, bested only by a pair of rally-inspired, all-wheel drive compact sedans with about 350 horsepower each. Third place in Modern officially went to brothers Hugo and Maxime Vadeboncoeur in a Honda CRX, who also won the Baldhead trophy handed out to the best rookies.

(To clear up any confusion in that last paragraph, Marc refers to the fact that the GS was in the Hybrid category, and not Modern.)

Congratulations to entire Team Lexus, who significantly improved on their 2007 18th place finish. I really enjoyed following along on their progress, and I'm already looking forward to next year's event.

It's been an up and down couple days for the Targa GS 450h -- after completing Day 1 with zero errors, Team Lexus fell back to 15th place on Day 2. And now, yesterday, they surged forward and ended the stage in 8th position. This is quite a feat, though driver Marc Lachapelle stays humble in his latest blog post:

Don’t worry; we are not letting this good result get to our collective heads. There are still two full days of hard, fast and sometimes treacherous rally stages to complete before getting to the finish line in St-John’s. Our goal has not changed. We want to bring our car there in perfect shape, with a happy crew.

I'm really enjoying the race blog, and still getting a kick of these short little video clips being posted on Youtube:

(Also, be sure to check out the Facebook page.)

Today, we have some seriously short video clips of the Lexus GS 450h currently racing around the Targa Newfoundland course. There's quite a few on Youtube, but these two here are the best indication of the speed and conditions:

As far as the race itself, Team Lexus had a great showing yesterday:

Results for Day One were finally posted and Team Lexus has now officially finished a day at Targa Newfoundland with a perfect score of zero penalty points, along with thirteen other teams. So we can say we led the overall standings at Targa – an honour shared with a baker’s dozen of other teams – for a day.

Realistically, this perfect score might very likely soon become a memory to cherish for some of the teams, because things will get more difficult for everyone today. They certainly will for us, as we tackle two tight stages to start the day. With the weight of our trusty Gs450h, these are typically the most difficult in conditions that reward great agility and fierce acceleration.

The race-modified Lexus GS 450h has returned to the Targa Newfoundland race after competing last year. Running from September 13-20, the team behind the hybrid racer is keeping a great blog over at Autonet. Here's an excerpt from yesterday's post, after completion of the Prologue stage:

And for our first pass through the much tighter and trickier Torbay stage, I promptly forgot to deactivate the systems before taking off at the start. Cars running before us had spewed quite a bit of sand and gravel on the course, so the VDIM system beeped merrily several times while jerking the car back on what its silicon chip brain considers the best trajectory. The car felt tighter and more stable but the ‘electronic nannies’ as enthusiasts often call these systems, still made the handling feel somewhat disjointed and unsynchronized.

The third run, over the same course but with the VDIM duly shut off, was the charm. Everything flowed together nicely. For the first time at Targa, I was able to pick what I considered the best line through the sections covered with sand and gravel, give it some throttle and keep the car’s attitude consistent. I even - lo and behold - COUNTERSTEERED for the very first time at Targa – ever so slightly – through one of the liberally peppered corners.

Alan also zoomed up to command center to find out about our starting position for tomorrow (Monday) morning. There, even though these numbers don’t count, we discovered that we had racked up the 6th best composite times out of the 65 cars entered in the Targa competition this year, 3rd best in Modern.

It's great fun reading about the experience of racing in Lexus' sport sedan, and the writing is fantastic. Great to see them doing so well, more on this as the race progresses.

The DRC Motorsports Lexus IS-GTF (which has suitably been renamed as an IS 350) had a bumpy start to its inaugural race this past weekend, my.IS has the details:

The #72 DRC Motorsports Lexus IS 350 made its initial Mid-Ohio appearance during the second practice session, but entered pit lane before completing a full practice lap. The team opted to sit out qualifying, as well, and, thus, started at the very back of the pack of the 30-car SPEED World Challenge Grand Touring class grid...Yet, never underestimate 2007 SPEED World Challenge Touring Car Champion Jeff Altenburg, for he managed to finish the race in 24th place, only one lap down from the first 19 cars, and ahead of five Dodge Vipers and a Chevrolet Corvette, delivering a very credible first effort.

Hard to expect anything in a race when you start in last place, so placing 24th is a good result. The RDC IS should see action again at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, scheduled for August 10th.

Whatever the reason, every time the Lexus IS-F & racing are linked together, it ends up being super-confusing. Case in point: My.IS has posted a story about pair of race-modified IS-Fs owned by DRC Motorsports that are about to enter the GT class of the SPEED World Challenge -- only they're not really IS-Fs, but the two race cars purchased from Team Lexus.

Regardless, the cars are powered by a 510hp 4.7-liter V8, and the first one will be making its debut this weekend in Ohio. The driver, Jeff Altenburg, was last year's SWC Touring Car champion. The race itself will be broadcast on SPEED TV on Thursday, July 24 at 1:00pm.

[Source: My.IS via Autoblog]