Targa Rally: Age proves no barrier

For the past two years Bay of Plenty pairing Keith Yeats and Shirley Faull have finished sixth in the Classic section of the Targa Rotorua tarmac rally event.
Not bad considering they share Keith's well-used 1977 BMW 535 E12. It's quite extraordinary considering their ages, Keith 73 and Shirley 83.
Faull, from Te Puke, has a car of her own - a Toyota Corolla which she uses in local club events - but since 2004, when she answered a co-driver wanted ad, she has contested the various Targa events with Rotorua local Yeats.
"They must have wondered what struck them," Faull said as she related how she got into motorsport at the grand old age of 74.
"I bought a Toyota Celica in 2002 and through owning it came into contact with the Toyota MR2 club. At that stage I thought I might like to become a rally driver so I asked one of the members of that club how I should go about it.
"He told me that the first thing I had to do was join a club so I did. By June or July of that year I had my competition licence and by November I was co-driving with Keith in the Dunlop Targa rally."
Since then the pair have not only become Targa regulars, they have contested the Race to The Sky hillclimb near Queenstown in 2005 and, this year, the new Ohakune Giant 1000 hillclimb.
In 2009, when they finished sixth in class at the two-day Targa Rotorua event it was out of a (class) field of 40 and they were only 11 minutes behind the class-winning Holden Commodore V8 of former New Zealand Super Saloon (Speedway) champion Brent Emerson and Sheryl Hanright.
When they finished sixth in class last year it was out of a field of 29 cars and they were just 14 minutes behind class winners Mark Parsons and Mal Clark in Parson's internationally-famous V8-engined Triumph TR7.
Faull is justifiably proud of their achievements but wonders what all the fuss is about.
"I don't actually feel old," she laughs. "I've always been active and when I talk to people about what I do I always tell them that if there is something they think they might want to do then they should do it because you never know what you can or can't do until you try."
She should know. When she and her late husband were bringing up their two daughters Faull learned to fly. When her daughters left home she took up athletics, twice travelling to the World Veterans' Games and completing the Rotorua Marathon in 1989.
Since then motor racing has become her main competitive focus and because of it she has become a regular on the Senior Citizens speaking circuit.
This year's event will see all competitor's cars equipped with Auckland company Trackit's GPS-enabled transponders which will provide valuable information about where their car is in a stage and how well it is going in real time.