Targa timing (not to be confused with target timing) is a system of timing used in car rallying. It was invented by John Brown, the Clerk of the Course for the Targa Rusticana, a road rally (named after the Italian Targa Florio) organised in Wales in the 1960s by Oxford University Motor Drivers Club. Targa timing became the standard timing method used on rallies for almost 20 years following its invention in 1963. However, it was eventually banned as it became widely abused—the standard method by which organisers could set very high average speeds in a manner that left no permanent record. History In all rallies, competitors run against the clock, rather than directly against each other. The winner is the crew losing the fewest penalties for failing to maintain the set average speeds (either under or over). However, determining this result in a fair and logistically feasible manner can be quite a challenge, especially as events may cover a wide area and be broken up into many different sections. Targa timing was one of the practical timing systems developed to allow rapid and accurate results calculation to take place. By the early 1960s, competitors would carry a sealed watch with them, and show it to the marshal at time controls along the route, who would record the time. The system worked, but was open to tampering and a variety of tricks employed by competitors to cheat. To combat this, the system changed so that each marshal would have his own clock, each of which had been synchronised at the start of the event. In a standard timed event, run to so-called BBC or "telecom" time, each clock would simply show the time of day to the nearest second. A characteristic of this type of timing is that the average speeds calculated for each section are easy to compute, and if this involved breaking the law with respect of speed limits, etc., it could cause problems for organisers, since it could be seen as an incitement. A competitor's time card would list the actual times and stand as a permanent record of the speeds at which they had driven to attain them. In addition, computing results was a slow and laborious process. Targa timing solved these problems. On a targa-timed event, each clock is not synchronised to all of the others. Instead, each successive clock is retarded behind by the