RallySport Magazine April 2017

Issue #11 - April 2017

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OTAGO CLASSIC EUREKA RALLY

rallysportmag.com.au

OTAGO RALLY

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 1

EDITORIAL

THE POWER OF THE STAR DRIVER thought the invitation was a joke, but before they knew it, 'Baby Blue' was prepped and rank Kelly admits that he's an put in a shipping container overnight sensation 25 years in headed for the land of the the making! long white cloud.

Had it not been for a video made by While he doesn't have his daughter for a school project, the the credentials of some of likeable Irishman and his purposely the Otago Rally's other big driven Escort, nicknamed "Baby Blue”, name drivers like Mikkola, may never have received the worldwide Waldegard, Vatanen or recognition that they now enjoy.

Mouton, the popularity of Back in October 2016, RallySport Frank Kelly proves that the Magazine made contact with Kelly, and internet can do wonderful the two-part interview in the November things for a driver's notoriety. and December issues of the magazine Approachable, funny, and were soon followed by an invitation more than willing to sit and have a from Otago Rally organisers to head to chat, Kelly was even more of a hit at New Zealand for the April event. the event than Otago Rally organisers At first Kelly and his wife, Rosemarie, could ever have imagined. In fact his popularity and fan-pulling Frank Kelly was a hit in New power was, Zealand. (Photo: Pete Johnson) arguably, even greater than Ken Block's when he competed in the event in 2015.

While the visit to the South Island was a career highlight for Kelly, it was perhaps even

more of a win for the Otago Rally.

The rally has a long history of attracting famous competitors for the Classic Rally that runs in conjunction with the NZ championship round, and organisers have been more than willing to spend good money to attract star drivers in top quality cars.

And while it’s easy to say that money can achieve such results, the event’s ongoing sponsorship and funding from the Dunedin City Council is clear proof that spending money can help make you money, and help to further establish your event for years to come.

Every year the Otago Rally’s star driver impresses and makes their own unique impact on the event. Frank Kelly was no exception.

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By PETER WHITTEN

F

2 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

CONTENTS - #11 APRIL 2017 FEATURES

FOLLOW US ON:

EVENT REPORTS

08 FORCE MOTORSPORT

WE GO INSIDE THE HOME OF AP4 RALLY CARS IN NEW ZEALAND

26 FROM THE BACK SEAT

TOM SMITH SPENDS THE WEEKEND AT THE OTAGO RALLY

48 NZ'S FIRST LADY

FLEUR PEDERSEN IS ONE OF NZ RALLYING'S MOST TRAVELLED

54 HANNU MIKKOLA INTERVIEW

THE 1983 WORLD CHAMPION HAD A LONG AND ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER

66 THE MAGIC OF FRENCH RALLYING

REGULARS

14 EUREKA RALLY

HARRY BATES TOOK FIRST BLOOD IN THE 2017 ARC

02 EDITORIAL 04 LATEST RALLY NEWS

NEWS FROM AROUND THE SPORT

20 OTAGO RALLY

OUR COMPREHENSIVE COVERAGE OF NZ'S CLASSIC RALLY, AND THE FIRST NZRC ROUND OF 2017

06 MOLLY TAYLOR COLUMN

38 RALLY OF MEXICO

36 FIVE MINUTES WITH ...

KRIS MEEKE FOUND THE CITROEN'S SWEET SPOT IN SOUTH AMERICA

44 TOUR DE CORSE

FINALLY, THIERRY NEUVILLE TOOK HIS FIRST WIN OF THE WRC SEASON

THE 2017 AUSSIE CHAMPION WRITES EXCLUSIVELY FOR RSM

OTAGO RALLY STALWART AND RALLY MANAGER, NORMAN OAKLEY

74 PHOTO OF THE MONTH

WHERE ELSE, BUT NEW ZEALAND?

MEMORIES OF THE TOUR DE CORSE

72 TURBOGATE

BACK IN THE '90S, TOYOTA LEFT THE WRC IN DISGRACE

COVER PHOTOS: PETER WHITTEN (OTAGO),TOYOTA (ARC)

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The passion for rallying ....

MANAGING EDITOR

PETER WHITTEN

peter@rallysportmag.com.au

CONTRIBUTORS

SENIOR WRITER

TOM SMITH tom@rallysportmag.com.au

Martin Holmes, Blair Bartels, Geoff Ridder, Jeff Whitten, Molly Taylor, Craig O'Brien, Fleur Pedersen

PUBLISHED BY:

ADVERTISING

PETER WHITTEN peter@rallysportmag.com.au

Peter Whitten RallySport Magazine peter@rallysportmag.com.au www.rallysportmag.com.au

COPYRIGHT:

No material, artwork or photos may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publishers. RallySport Magazine takes care in compiling specifications, prices and details but cannot accept responsibility for any errors. The opinions expressed by columnists and contributors to this magazine are not necessarily those of RallySport Magazine.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 3

NEWS@RALLYSPORTMAG.COM.AU Turner's new AP4 Audi.

AP4 AUDI QUATTRO BOOSTS NZRC FIELD

T

he New Zealand Rally Championship has received a further boost, with news that Dylan Turner will debut a new Audi Quattro S1 at the International Rally of Whangarei.

Dylan Turner's new Audi Quattro S1 AP4 looks the goods.

Built to AP4 regulations by Choice Performance in Pukekohe, the Audi joins AP4 cars from Holden, Toyota, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Suzuki and Skoda in this year’s NZRC. "I've always admired the Audi -- the Quattro was kind of a cult car when it comes to rally. Audi is obviously a name synonymous with rallying," Turner told the New Zealand Herald.

"I had been watching the AP4 cars and noticed how quick they were and how easy they appeared to be to drive.

"So it was just a case of coming up with a brand and for me it was a no brainer -- the Audi brand is something I have always been passionate about. I have owned Audis for the past 10-15 years so that was how I decided to go down the Audi track.

"We looked at the successful R5 cars that are built by the sister company Skoda and looked at what they were doing and copied a lot of it, but using Audi parts. We got a 1600cc Audi motor built up based on the R5 specifications."

Turner has previously driven Lancer Evos and finished seventh at last weekend’s Otago Rally. He hopes to have the car ready in time to contest the pre-event shakedown at Whangarei in three weeks time, and then the rally proper.

While others have had some reliability problems with their new AP4 cars, Turner hopes that won’t be the case with the Audi.

"I don't think we'll have as many issues because we have gone down the route of replicating what the R5 are doing,” he said.

"We have gone for a tried and proven 1600 motor with the Audi block and Audi head that has been used by the Skoda team for years. There are always things we might not have thought of, but hopefully not too much."

Hayden Paddon's 58 year old co-driver, John Kennard, has announced he is to retire after Rally Finland in July.

At the age of 57, Kennard became the oldest competitor to win a WRC event (Argentina 2016).

He will be replaced by 28-year old British co-driver Sebastian Marshall.

MINI TO MISS WA Eli Evans has been forced to abandon plans to debut his brand new Mini Cooper AP4 at the Forest Rally, round two of the ARC. The Evans Motorsport team had spent many hours with the Mini on the dyno, but problems with the fuel delivery system hampered their progress.

"The Mini Cooper is looking very promising, but is not running at its full capability,” Team Manager

Jesse Robison said.

“We want to make sure that it’s 100% right before entering the forests.”

The decision means that Evans will drive the Race Torque Peugeot 208 Maxi for the second ARC round in succession.

Like in Victoria, the car was to have been driven by Arron Windus, but the late problems for Evans means that Windus misses out on driving the car once again.

The AP4 Mini will miss WA.

Find us at: www.chicane.co.nz 4 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

Call us o

All the highlights from the International Otago Classic Rally

▼

▼

DON'T MISS .... DON'T MISS .... DON'T MISS ....

RallySport Magazine's Otago Rally highlights

DALTON TO MISS MORE RALLIES A

devastated Richie Dalton will miss the first three rounds of the New Zealand Rally Championship after major wiring problems were discovered in his brand-new Ford Fiesta Proto.

The Australian-based Irishman was to have contested the Otago Rally, however, the late arrival of the car from Poland (where the build started) meant the Fiesta wasn’t ready in time for its scheduled debut.

Since then, things have got even worse, and the car won’t be seen on the stages for some time yet.

“The contractor we got to wire the car has left us in a complete mess. We had nothing working on the steering wheel, no diff settings, no lights, among other things,” Dalton told RallySport Magazine.

“So we got in an expert to go through it and do a systems check and try fix the problems. What he found

By PETER WHITTEN was astonishing, “All the wiring was too small to carry the proper voltage to the PDMs, and the pins were also too small to carry the power.

“For example, the lights were 40 amps, but the wire and plug was good for only 17 amps. So the lights would go on, then turn off.

The PDM would power it up again, but it would go off again.

“We had the same issues with the paddle shift, compressor, diff controller, and so on.

The plug in the back of the alternator was already melted.

“If we did manage to enter the rally in Jenolan as a test last weekend, there's no doubt it would have burned to the ground,” Dalton added.

“Dashsport in Sydney did an incredible job building the car, and I can’t thank

them enough, but the wiring contractor we used was not associated with the team in any way.”

On advice, the Shamrock Motorsport team have been advised to remove all the wiring looms from the car and start again from scratch.

The car will be re-wired, starting over Easter, meaning the team will miss the first three rounds of the NZRC, with Dalton now

unsure whether it’s even worth sending the car to New Zealand for just three championship rounds “It's devastating news and very hard to swallow,” he said.

"I've lost a lot of money, but more painful is I've lost out on competing in this year’s championship.”

Round 2 of the NZ Rally Championship is on April 29 and 30.

HJC MOTORSPORTS

on: AU 1800 CHICANE or NZ 0800 CHICANE APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 5

COLUMN: MOLLY TAYLOR

MOLLY TAYLOR

A

t last the ARC season has kicked off and it was great to get back into competition at the Eureka Rally in Ballarat.

There is always that unknown factor heading into a new year, where everyone is keen to get the first round underway and see where the pace is at.

What was really exciting was to see just how close the competition is.

The championship is really gaining momentum and, combined with the great TV and online coverage we have now, we are in for an exciting year!

For us, unfortunately it was definitely not the start we were hoping for. On Saturday morning we broke the front differential, which cost us quite a lot of time.

The boys did a fantastic job replacing the gearbox at the lunchtime service, and we did what we could to recover in the afternoon.

Day two started off a little rocky again, firstly from my end where I missed a few junctions in the dust and gave us an initial set back.

We bounced back with two second fastest times coming into lunch, and I must say it was nice to be able to show some of our potential in the new car!

The hot temperatures, narrow forest stages and low wind gave us an added challenge in keeping the engine cool enough.

In the end, we had too big a gap to fight with the top three for the Heat Two podium, but in any case it was exciting to watch that battle unfold ahead of us.

So, in the end, some points up on the scoreboard and a lot of learning taken on board.

For sure, there is some frustration that things didn’t go perfectly – but that rarely happens in rallying! In any case, our times, considering the challenges we faced, shows us that the potential is there.

I was actually at a Subaru Parts & After Sales conference recently and we were discussing the success of the

team last year and the start of the new season.

What really stands out to me now is that the real strength of our team is not when everything goes well, but rather when things don’t go to plan.

It’s easy for everyone to be motivated and happy when we win. However, the guys and girls at Les Walkden Rallying and Subaru have put in a huge effort, both in the lead up to Ballarat and now, looking ahead to the Forest Rally.

We are doing everything to make sure we put our best foot forward once again. We definitely haven’t lost sight of what the goal is and are just as motivated as ever!

The Forest Rally is one of my favourite rallies on the calendar, and I am counting the days to get back behind the wheel and give it another crack.

- Molly It wasn’t the best start to the ARC for Molly Taylor and Bill Hayes, but they secured valuable ARC points.

Photos: Warren Kirby, Subaru

6 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

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APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 7

FEATURE: FORCE MOTORSPORT

8 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

TO BE RECKONED WITH

They’re New Zealand’s leader in building AP4 rally cars. We take a closer look at the rapidly expanding Force Motorsport.

Story: BLAIR BARTELS Photos: GEOFF RIDDER APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 9

FEATURE: FORCE MOTORSPORT

I

t is a hard point to argue that the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship is at the strongest level in memory, if not at all.

With 51 starters at the opening round, including 11 different manufacturers lining up for the opening round and at least one more due to join the series at round two, the series continues to go from strength to strength.

One of the major components of the success is the AP4 concept that has seen an option for four-wheel drive cars outside of the traditional Subaru and Mitsubishi, and a lot of the work done on the AP4 concept has been done by the team at Force Motorsport, fronted

by Andrew Hawkeswood, himself a topline competitor.

“I started Force Motorsport back when I was doing the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship, we needed a limited company to register the cars and equipment to for customs and carnet reasons, so that’s how it started back in 2002,” Hawkeswood said.

“We already had our own workshop running and building our own cars and we did some customer work, but we didn’t go looking for it because at that stage I was destroying enough cars to keep us busy.

“We were running Speedway

Andrew Hawkeswood is a topline competitor, and the man behind Force Motorsport.

“We did some customer work, but we didn’t go looking for it because at that stage I was destroying enough cars to keep us busy.”

(Sprintcar) and Offshore powerboats as well as the NZRC and APRC, so she The new AP4 Mini for Eli Evans was built at Force Motorsport, but is yet to make its debut.

10 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

was a pretty full on deal,” explains Hawkeswood, who nowadays finds time for only rallying amongst business commitments.

The AP4 concept was originally born when both Emma Gilmour and Hawkeswood built locally constructed ‘Maxi’ style cars based on the Argentinian design - Gilmour a Suzuki which she still runs, and Hawkeswood a Mazda 2, which will be campaigned in 2017 by Rhys Gardner.

However, packaging issues and ultimately the lure of local distributor backing meant a change was needed.

“Mazda had a new model coming out in 2014 and after initial conversations about future support from Mazda, it was indicated a more conventional-type east-west design was required for them to be interested in supporting us.”

So it was that the team at Force Motorsport set out to build themselves a new style of AP4 car, originally looking at a single build that people would also be able to purchase, but quite unaware of just how popular the new style of car would become.

“Originally we had an ex-Prodrive engineer do some drawings for us and he knew the ins and outs of what they did on both the Subaru and the Mini WRC cars, so there was a fair bit of knowledge we could lean on there.

“Then Tim Keegan, who had been at Kelly Racing for the building of the first of the Car of the Future chassis’ for V8 Supercars, came on board and was an integral part in getting the first of the new Mazdas off the ground.”

With the car that Hawkeswood would drive in last year’s NZRC constructed late in 2015, some discussions with a couple of parties would see two more cars built, for Hayden Paddon and Glenn Inkster.

“Basically what happened was we’d

had quite a bit of input from Hayden (Paddon) all the way along, and he’d been talking about building a car for New Zealand. By December in 2015 we had an order from Hyundai New Zealand to build a car for Hayden to use in New Zealand, then we had Spencer Winn from TransNet order the Skoda that Glenn Inkster is now running.

“Both of those cars were started on January 5, 2016 and were obviously completed in time for Otago three months later, which was a massive, massive job.”

That process would see as many as seven contract fabricators/mechanics on top of the three full time staff in Force’s original workshops for as many as 18 hours a day, seven days a week.

Later in the year, Force would move to a new, purpose-built facility that includes engine and gearbox rooms, fabrication areas, as well as general preparation and assembly areas, as opposed to the old facility that would see the whole process done in the same area.

One of the interesting points learned in the process of building the three different cars was the differences in the amount of work required across what, externally, are three similar-styled small hatch backs.

“The Hyundai required a lot of work and anything with small wheel arches takes a fair bit of extra work,” Hawkeswood explains.

“The Mazda’s a fairly easy car because the floor pan is the same as a CX-3 small sized SUV, so it doesn’t require any work around the wheel arches. The rear subframe always goes in easily because we effectively put a whole rear floor into each car. With the front subframes, some don’t look quite as nice as others because the way the points work out the car needs to fit the subframe, rather than the subframe fitting the car, but if you start trying to make a new subframe for every car, that’s where the time and money comes from.”

The debut event for the cars went well, with Paddon taking victory in the Hyundai by a record 9 minutes, 22.1 seconds over the two days in the 2016 Otago Rally, while Hawkeswood would take fifth place despite some niggling problems. All three cars set top three stage times on their first event.

Hawkeswood would carry on to claim third place in the NZRC for 2016 after Paddon’s WRC commitments meant he was unable to compete outside of the opening two rounds.

On top of the busy programme of running the cars, the concept took off to the point where a 12th bodyshell is about to head to the workshop to receive the AP4 treatment.

“The concept took off, to the point where a 12th bodyshell is about to head to the workshop to receive the AP4 treatment.”

While Force Motorsport have just three full-time staff, which not only cover preparing shells but also running Hawkeswood’s campaign event to event, the team also have access to a large amount of skilled contractors and are able to outsource machining work while keeping the fabrication side of things completely in-house.

On top of that, the team’s complete maintenance schedule, plus the

building and development of engines, is all done in-house.

“Tim Keegan and Kane Hombre take care of the fabrication side of things and Norm Soo takes care of the engines, gearboxes, shock absorbers and tuning.

“We have a couple of guys we take on from the local Manukau Institute of Technology Motorsport course in Pukekohe. We try to take on one guy a year from that, which is good and we are due to take on another one soon.

We’ve also got several local engineering companies who do all of our CNC works and things like that.

“Fabrication wise, we do all of our own roll cages, subframes, fuel tank covers, transmission tunnels, basically all the tube and sheet metal work is done in-house.

“We’ve got a part-time draughtsman

The purpose-built Force Motorsport workshop is the home of AP4 rally cars in NZ.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 11

FEATURE: FORCE MOTORSPORT

who does all our drawings. Basically we come up with the idea of what we think the design should be, the guy draws it and then we’ve got another guy that does the machining. We’ve got two CNC mills and two CNC lathes that we have access to.

“I think for anybody now, it doesn’t matter if you’re in a barn in the country or a factory in the city, as long as you’ve got an internet connection you can have pretty much anything made anywhere in the world.”

For Hawkeswood, it was a huge boost to the project when Hayden Paddon tested his Hyundai in March 2016 before Otago, claiming the car was very predictable and easy to drive. The success also shows in the adaptability of the platform, with nine different makes of car all fitting themselves across the jig to date (currently Mazda, Holden, Toyota, Hyundai, Skoda, Mitsubishi, Mini, Audi, and soon to be, Ford).

“At that initial test day a week before Otago, Hayden told us it was neutral and very tuneable, which is a great platform to start with. That was a huge boost to the whole team to know we were on the right track with the cars.

“We could’ve gone down the R5 route, but we would end up with effectively a two-make championship again with Ford and Skoda and everyone would have to buy bits from the other side of the world.

“In New Zealand, we are a relatively small market for manufacturers, so we don’t get the big works budgets, but there is local importer and distributor budgets. Giving them a car they can identify with has really got them excited about supporting New Zealand 12 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

“Hayden told us it was neutral and very tuneable. That was a huge boost to the whole team to know we were on the right track with the cars.” rallying.”

Also pleasing for Hawkeswood is the fact that both Motorsport New Zealand and Land Transport NZ’s low volume department have been working closely with Force Motorsport on the project.

“Motorsport New Zealand are right behind us. Outside of our option and what Emma Gilmour has done with the Maxi car, there isn’t really another option at the moment.

“We’ve got a pretty comprehensive kit including the front and rear subframes, the strut towers, the bottom arms, the uprights, the top hats, the axles and CVs, the steering components.

Motorsport New Zealand are due to publish the full list of AP4 components and finalised regulations shortly.

“We’re working closely with LVV NZ to get a Type Certification on our components, which will make getting the low volume certification a lot easier.”

One of the user-friendly parts of the AP4 concept from the Force Motorsport stable is that teams have the option of delivering a stripped-out shell that will have the appropriate pick up points inserted into the body, right through to delivering a road-going small hatchback and picking up a turn-key, fire-breathing rally car.

“We’re still trying to feel our way with what works. Obviously each team has different needs. Really we can do anything from supplying a shell with the pick-up points, tunnels etc. and ready for a roll cage is one option, or a complete rolling shell and everything ready to go to paint is another option.

“We can do a complete turn-key build as well, although a lot of teams like to finish their own cars off.”

Outside of the local market, there has been a lot of inquiry from not just Australia, but several Asian countries and beyond. However, at this stage, only one car has left New Zealand’s shores.

“In Australia we’ve got Eli Evans’ Mini which we built the rolling shell for. There’s a few people in Australia making noises about it.

“It’s a shame the Mini couldn’t be at the first round, but that was nothing to do with the gear or work we supplied to them. But there is definitely enquiry, I’m not too phased, I’m not looking for work really, as we’ve got plenty to do.”

Hawkeswood took a fine second in the Otago Rally, after leading early.

(Photo: Peter Whitten)

A competitor with more than 20 years of NZRC experience under his belt, Hawkeswood certainly was aware of the impression competitors would have if a sole supplier situation was created as far as supplying components for the cars.

“I was a bit sceptical at the start with being a competitor myself and the reaction of fellow competitors if we were to create a rule that said everyone had to buy from one supplier and create a monopoly. I knew that it might turn people off the class.

“With Kiwi ingenuity, there is a limit as to what people will pay for components before they feel they’re getting ripped off. That’s why the door was left open to another manufacturer to start producing items.

“In hindsight that was a mistake and probably some people’s lives would be a lot easier if they weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but that’s how it goes.

“One of the reasons why we were able to develop the eastwest configuration without it being ridiculously expensive for everyone was because we had to do it for ourselves and it just worked out for us that people wanted to buy it.

“It certainly wasn’t done as a

“We’d certainly love to promote the AP4 concept more and plan on doing a least one APRC event this year.” commercial venture. I certainly wasn’t pinning my retirement on it, all of the development cost was absorbed into our first car.”

With Hawkeswood’s sights firmly set on a national title for the 2017 season, what does the future hold for Force Motorsport?

“We’d certainly love to promote the AP4 concept a lot more and plan on doing at least one overseas Asia-Pacific Rally Championship event this year.

“I’ve only got a few more years at national champs left in me, so we’re certainly looking at doing something classic, something probably along the lines of the Audi (Force Motorsport constructed the Audi Quattro S1 replica now owned by Stewart Reid), but a different Group B car.

“But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’ll be something spectacular, that’s what it’s all about -

you’ve gotta put on a show.

“If we can keep producing components and doing 2-3 shells a year, that will be enough to keep the shop busy.”

On top of that, Hawkeswood is also looking at something as more of an entry level car.

Over the off season, Force built an AP4 shell for Andrew’s 16-year old son Jack, who is contesting NZRC’s low capacity front-wheel drive class, utilising a two-litre naturally aspirated engine and front-wheel drive gearbox, which will be able to take AP4 running gear moving forward.

But Hawkeswood has some other plans for two-wheel drive versions.

“We are definitely looking at producing a more club friendly version of the uprights so that it can be utilised, because the platform would be a great starter for a rear-wheel drive car.

“If we could have a jig and a subframe etc., pretty much a club version of everything, that would be good.”

Whatever the future holds, what Force Motorsport has delivered is a breed of spectacular looking and performing rally cars that have helped turn the NZ Rally Championship into the strongest national championship in this part of the world.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 13

REPORT: EUREKA RALLY - ARC 1

HARRY GRABS THE GOLD 14 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

By PETER WHITTEN APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 15

REPORT: EUREKA RALLY - ARC 1

H

arry Bates went some way to erasing the disappointment of last year’s Australian Rally Championship loss by taking victory in the opening round of the season, the Eureka Rally at Ballarat.

Driving the same Toyota Corolla Super 2000 as last year, Bates and John McCarthy finished the weekend on 70 points, two ahead of Coffs Harbour’s Nathan Quinn, and three clear of Victorian Eli Evans.

Current champion, Molly Taylor, finished the weekend in fifth place in a new Production Rally Car-spec Subaru WRX STI.

PRE-EVENT

There was much excitement leading up to the Eureka Rally, with Eli Evans set to debut his brand new Mini Cooper AP4.

Photos of the car on social media had rally fans salivating at the prospect of seeing the machine in action, but it wasn’t to be.

Computer problems just two days before the rally proved unfixable in the timeframe allowed, and Evans initially looked like he could miss the event altogether.

Meanwhile, Arron Windus’ failed British Rally Championship plans saw him put in a late entry in the ex-Mark Pedder Peugeot 208 Maxi. The car needed to be towed from Perth to Ballarat before the event, only arriving around 11am on the day before the first stage.

Then, when Evans’ problems emerged, his team rapidly did a deal Nathan Quinn showed his class yet again with a fast, clean drive.

(Photo: John Doutch)

16 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

which saw the three-time Australian Champion lining up in the Peugeot, and Windus taking the reins of the spare Subaru of Craig Brooks.

Despite the late dramas, both drivers recorded impressive results over the course of the weekend.

HEAT 1

With a brand new event comes brand new stages, and day one of the Eureka Rally saw five stages, each to be run twice, in the morning and then again after a service break back in Ballarat.

Dry and dusty conditions were to provide a challenge for competitors, particularly those running a little further down the running order.

Combined with that, drivers in the ARC field were using the new MRF control tyres for the first time, meaning that car set-up and slightly different handling characteristics needed to be conquered.

A close battle throughout the day would finish in favour of Harry Bates and John McCarthy in their Toyota Corolla S2000, as they finished 14.8 seconds clear of the Mitsubishi Lancer of Nathan Quinn and Dave Calder.

Quinn had Bates’ measure for much of the day, but turbo problems on the final two stages saw him drop 22 seconds, giving Bates the first Heat win

of the year.

“The win feels amazing and is the perfect start to the season.

The whole team has made a huge effort over the break, and this win is a reward for everyone’s hard work,” Bates said.

Electrical problems midway through the day had hampered Eli Evans’ progress, meaning the hired Peugeot 208 Maxi slipped to fifth place, and elevating both Arron Windus and Marcus Walkem into third and fourth.

Windus took some time to get to grips with his hired car, but his Eli Evans won Heat 2 in his speed increased as the day went on, and he finished a minute and a borrowed Peugeot 208.

(Photo: John Doutch) half clear of Walkem’s Lancer Evo IX. An impressive debut looked on the Brooks took sixth in last year’s cards for Lewis Bates, brother of Harry, championship-winning Subaru, while contesting the event in a front-wheel gearbox problems proved costly drive Toyota Corolla. for Molly Taylor’s Subaru WRX STI, Lewis was an impressive ninth dropping the reigning champion to quickest on the opening stage, but seventh place at the end of the day. slid off the road on stage two, with Arron Windus was fast on home soil, but in a borrowed car.

(Photo: John Doutch)

disastrous results.

“About 5km in, we ran wide on to some loose gravel and the car got stuck on a dirt mound about a metre off the road,” Bates said.

“We spent two minutes trying to get the car out before a fire started underneath the car. We tried everything to put the fire out, but were unsuccessful and the Corolla burnt to the ground.

“To say I’m devastated would be an understatement,” he said.

Craig Brooks won the new ARC2 class, ahead of Brad Markovic and Tony Sullens (all in Subarus), while Grant Walker and Luke Sytema led an Escort double in the Classics.

Heat 1 results: 1. Bates/McCarthy, Toyota Corolla S2000, 1:13:50.2 2. Quinn/Calder, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, +00:14.8 3. Windus/Fisher, Subaru Impreza WRX STI, +01:02.7 4, Walkem/Walkem, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, +02:36.1 5. Evans/Weston, Peugeot 208 Max, +04:00.7 It wasn’t the greatest start for Molly Taylor, but she took a good haul of points for Subaru. (Photo: John Doutch)

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 17

REPORT: EUREKA RALLY - ARC 1

Tasmanian Marcus Walkem lies 4th in the ARC title race after round one.

(Photo: John Doutch)

HEAT 2

The competition over the second day’s eight stages proved to be a battle royal, with only 7.9 seconds covering the top three drivers after more dry and dusty stages.

With his electrical problems sorted, Eli Evans was the man to catch from the opening stage, and his seesawing battle with Quinn and Bates throughout the day was one to remember.

Evans’ lead was just a second and a half with a stage to go, but a blistering time through the final stage was enough to see him increase his advantage to 6.5 seconds over Quinn.

Not to be denied, Bates also made a late charge, falling only 1.4 seconds shy of Quinn, but his third place secured him the overall win for the weekend.

But it was Evans who was the man of the hour in Heat 2.

“It was an enjoyable weekend,” Evans said. “The new MRF tyres were easy to drive on and I enjoyed the challenge of driving a 4WD rally car for the first time in eight years. Thanks to Race Torque for a cool car.”

For Bates, his overall win was not only his first, but saw him become, at the age of 22, the youngest winner of an ARC round.

“It was a full-on contest between the three of us from the first stage, with the overall lead swapping around stage by stage,” Harry Bates said.

“The roads were very dusty and the battle was intense with the result in the balance until the very end, which makes it even more rewarding to come out on top and record the win.”

Taylor also came to grips more with the new, faster Subaru on day two, claiming fourth place, just 48.9 seconds 18 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

Top 2WD finisher was Grant Walker in his Escort RS1800.

(Photo: John Doutch)

from the lead.

“We’re becoming much more familiar with the car and the edge that it offers over last year’s Group N car,” she said.

“We now need to start to using that to our advantage. Certainly the more time we get in this new car, the more confidence it adds and we’ll come away from this weekend with key learnings that we can apply at the Forest Rally in WA next month.”

Another solid drive from local boy Arron Windus netted him fifth place (and the Victorian Championship round win), over a minute clear of the Walkems in sixth spot.

ARC2 spoils for the second day went to Tony Sullens, ahead of Brooks and John O’Dowd, while Luke Sytema and Grant Walker swapped places as the

leading two Classics, ahead of Trevor Stilling’s Datsun Stanza.

A bonus point gave Walker the overall Classics win for the event, 75 points to Sytema’s 74.

Heat 2 results: 1. Evans/Weston, Peugeot 208 Max, 52:58.6 2. Quinn/Calder, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX, +00:06.5 3. Bates/McCarthy, Toyota Corolla S2000, +00:07.9 4. Taylor/Hayes, Subaru Impreza WRX, +00:48.9 5. Windus/Fisher, Subaru Impreza WRX STI, +01:02.7

Australian Rally Championship points: 1. Bates/McCarthy 70 points 2. Quinn/Calder 68 3. Evans/Weston 67 4. Walkem/Walkem 52 5. Taylor/Hayes 46

Greg Browne was on the spot when Lewis Bates, making his ARC debut, left the road in his Toyota Corolla. The youngest Bates son and co-driver, Anthony McLoughlin, were forced to watch in horror as the car caught fire and burnt to the ground.

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martinitours Prevot co-driving for Aussie Chris Atkinson in the 2008 Acropolis Rally.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 19

REPORT: OTAGO CLASSIC RALLY

FIGHT TO THE Markko Märtin made it two Otago Classic Rally wins in a row, but he had to work hard for it!

20 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

E FINISH

Story & Photos: PETER WHITTEN APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 21

REPORT: OTAGO CLASSIC RALLY Simon Evans, Datsun Stanza.

H

e had to work hard for it, but former WRC star, Markko Martin, came out on top to win his second consecutive Stadium Cars Otago Classic Rally at the wheel of the Rossendale Wines Ford Escort RS1800.

Kaikoura’s Regan Ross almost caused a massive boil over, pushing Martin all the way to the final stage in his Escort RS1800, while John Silcock was the first non Escort home, driving his Group B replica Mazda RX7 into third place.

As usual, the Otago Rally was the most anticipated classic rally of the year, with 49 starters and an incredible depth to the field. With 14 tough stages and 285km of competitive driving, just getting to the finish was going to be tough – let alone finishing in the top five.

After rain during the pre-event shakedown and reconnaissance, the weather fined up for the rally, with the roads drying quickly and providing a fast and dusty playing surface for drivers.

T

John Silcock, Mazda RX7.

DAY 1

he first day headed south of Dunedin for six shire road and forest stages around Lawrence, with a central service area in the streets of the local township. Most of the stages were on smooth, cresty shire roads, but the 33km forest stage called ‘Glendhu’ would really test crews.

The day would finish with the popular tarmac stage around the streets of Dunedin.

It quickly became clear that the battle for the lead was between Martin and Ross, and surprisingly for many, it was the Kiwi who set the early pace.

Martin had intercom issues on stage

22 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

4x Australian Champion, Simon Evans.

Second placed Regan Ross.

three, and Ross led by just 1.7 seconds, but the local star then blitzed the field on the 33km forest test, beating Martin by an incredible 19.4 seconds and stunning the rest of the field.

By the time the tarmac stage had been run late on Saturday afternoon, his lead had increased to 23.4 seconds, and an upset looked seriously on the cards.

Martin remained second, but needed

to pull something out of his hat on day two, with third after the opening day held down by three-time event winner Derek Ayson in his Nissan-powered Escort.

Another Classic Rally winner, Marcus van Klink, was fourth on the final event in his Group B Mazda RX7, a minute clear of John Silcock’s similar Mazda.

The top 10 was rounded out by a brace of Escort RS1800s, headed by

“Martin remained second, but needed to pull something out of his hat on day two.”

Tony Gosling, and followed by Ashton Wood, Jeff Judd, Graham Ferguson and Shane Murland.

It had been a tough day for others, however. Four-time Australian Champion, Simon Evans, was seventh after stage three, but retired his Datsun Stanza with mechanical problems on stage four. Evans would return to complete day two, but was out of the running for a top placing.

Another Datsun, the 1600 of Dunedin-based Aussie John Spencer, suffered a broken axle and ignition problems that halted his progress,

Tony Gosling, Ford Escort RS1800.

much to Spencer’s disgust.

Mike Townshend crashed his Toyota Corolla on the opening stage of the rally and would go no further, Keith Callinan’s Escort blew a gearbox on stage six, while Aussie regulars Darryn Snooks (Datsun 710 Violet) and Ed Mulligan (BMW) both retired after losing a wheel, and blowing a gearbox respectively.

Typically, it had been an actionpacked opening day, and with seven stages still to run, the podium placings were far from decided.

Grant Walker, Ford Escort RS1800.

T

DAY 2

he second day dawned with perfect weather conditions and a crisp, clear morning as an early start began with the 11km Whare Flat Mark Laughton, Hillman Avenger V8.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 23

REPORT: OTAGO CLASSIC RALLY

“Regan was very fast, and for sure we had to work harder than last year for the win.”

Jeff Judd managed fourth place, but a late roll provided extra excitement.

stage just outside Dunedin.

From the outset, Markko Martin was clearly on a charge, taking 13.9 seconds from Regan Ross’ lead and reducing the margin to just 9.5 seconds.

Ross spun his car on the exit of a water crossing just near the end of the

stage, and with plenty of distance still to run it was game on!

But it was a bad start for Derek Ayson, the third placed driver clipping a rock on the inside of a corner and breaking his Escort’s steering. He would return later in the day for the final three Derek Ayson, Ford Escort RS1800.

stages, but a blown motor cut his rally short once again.

By the time the leaders reached the Waihola service break after the third stage of the day, Regan Ross had seen his lead reduced to 6.9 seconds, not helped by a gearbox issue on the Waipori Gorge stage when he lost fourth gear. Quick work by his team had the gearbox replaced and a relieved Ross was on his way again.

There were further dramas on the following stage, at 47.42km, the rally’s longest. Third placed Marcus van Klink had been battling clutch issues in his Mazda, but that paled into insignificance when he rolled his car 600 metres into the stage, ending his rally.

This elevated John Silcock to third in his Mazda, closely followed by the Escorts of Tony Gosling and Jeff Judd.

Right at the front, clutch master cylinder problems for Regan Ross virtually assured Markko Martin the win as he was faster by 21.8 seconds on the long stage, and took what would prove to be an unassailable 14.9 second lead.

But it wasn’t without trying! Ross won the 30km Akatore stage by nine seconds, reducing the gap to 5.9, but a scorching stage record on Kuri Bush secured the win for the Estonian, with the final margin being 10.9 seconds. ‘’Regan was very fast, and for sure we had to work a lot harder than last year for the win,’’ Martin said. “It was a hell of a battle.”

John Silcock brought his Mazda home in a fine third place, albeit nearly four and a half minutes from the lead, while last minute dramas for Tony Gosling and Jeff Judd saw them changing places in fourth and fifth.

Like he did last year, Judd crashed heavily on Kuri Bush, this time rolling his Escort, but continuing on.

Gosling had a scary moment and a

Find us at: www.chicane.co.nz 24 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

Call us o

Regan Ross so nearly provided a Kiwi victory in the Otago Classic Rally. (Photo: Pete Johnson)

big spin after a jump on the same stage, then lost over a minute and a half on the final McIntosh Road stage, handing fourth to Judd.

Escort RS1800s filled positions six to eight, with Ashton Wood leading home Grant Walker and Graham Ferguson, with the top 10 rounded out by Allan Dippie’s Porsche 911, and Barry Varcoe’s Toyota Celica.

In the end, only 23 cars finished the classic rally, proving once again that the Otago Rally is a battle of survival.

Markko Martin’s hard-fought second win was one to remember, and already has the Estonian eyeing a hat-trick of victories in 2018.

2017 Stadium Cars Otago Classic Rally 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Markko Martin / Stephane Prevot Regan Ross / Lisa Hudson John Silcock / Richard Atkinson Jeff Judd / Grant Marra Tony Gosling / Blair Read Ashton Wood / Chris Lancaster Grant Walker / Tracey Dewhurt Graham Ferguson / Ross Moody Allan Dippie / Paul Coghill Barry Varcoe / Steve Gray

Ford Escort RS1800 Ford Escort RS1800 Mazda RX7 Ford Escort RS1800 Ford Escort RS1800 Ford Escort RS1800 Ford Escort RS1800 Ford Escort RS1800 Porsche 911 Carrera RS Toyota Celica TA64

2h53m.20.2s +10.9s +4m27.2s +7m47.7s +7m52.8s +7m53.6s +8m06.3s +11m09.5s +14m25.6s +15m49.2s

HJC MOTORSPORTS

on: AU 1800 CHICANE or NZ 0800 CHICANE APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 25

REPORT: OTAGO RALLY SPECTATING

OTAGO FROM THE BACK SEAT Story: TOM SMITH

K

ia ora from Dunedin 2017. As a passionate rally enthusiast on Australia’s east coast, there are really only a few rallies that I enjoy spectating, and that are relatively easy to get to from Brisbane.

Local events such as the International Rally of Queensland (now defunct) and Rally Australia are in my own back yard, but for a number of years the Otago Rally on New Zealand’s South Island has also been firmly on the calendar.

Those tricksters from the Otago Sports Car Club keep everyone guessing each year with an exciting announcement about a world standard guest driver coming to Southland to compete in the event.

In the lead-up to the 2017 rally, the early news was an intention to enter

Tom Smith with Frank Kelly, and (above) the exciting Irishman in action. (Photo: Pete Johnson)

from ‘mad Irishman’ Frank Kelly, and the late mail confirmed that Markko Martin and Stephane Prevot would return to defend their ‘Classic’ title.

Despite the presence of these quick internationals, take nothing away from an incredible array of super-fast Kiwis, a good number of Australian competitors 26 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

A long-weekend in Dunedin for (L-R) Peter Whitten, Tom Smith, Pete Johnson and Luke Whitten.

making the trip over, and a field which promised to include most of the latest AP4 rally cars built recently in NZ. Deal done!

Now, tasks in order of importance: After some research about flights and accommodation, bookings were made and a long weekend was planned, along with the opportunity to catch up at the event with a good number of Aussies also making the trip over.

Check with the better half that she didn’t mind that I would head off again – luckily, no objections there.

This year, we’d fly into Christchurch on the late Air NZ flight, overnight in a motel and drive down to Dunedin on the Friday morning in time for the Friday afternoon gathering of rally cars at the Octagon in downtown Dunedin.

Travelling with good mate and

sometime RallySport Magazine photographer Pete Johnson, we picked up the trusty ‘Jucy’ rent-a-car from Christchurch airport and hit the road south. Feeling very privileged this year, I was upgraded from a Daihatsu Charade to a natty little Suzuki Swift (automatic of course).

A couple of hours south and a stop at Oamaru to take a look at the motor museum was called for, and well worth the $10 entry fee. Taking pride of place are an ex-works Audi Quattro, a Ford Escort RS1800 and at the moment, the feature spot is held by the John Spencer-owned Nissan 240RS – which also has a direct NZ competition history.

While the 240RS is on the market, John now calls Dunedin home and the car sits in complete safety up at Oamaru.

Not only is the motor museum an attraction, but the historical precinct at Oamaru could easily occupy a half day.

Note to self – make time to do more tourist stuff next year!

Eventually arriving into Dunedin, we checked into our motel and after basic unpacking, turned on the heater for later. Things were cooling down and Dunedin can be cold in April, although the weather forecast was for a fine rally weekend.

O

ff we trotted to the Octagon where a huge crowd awaited, along with some of the entry of nearly 130 cars! Not all cars could be accommodated in the space available, and so the organisers only squeezed in about 80 or so. Still extremely impressive.

What a class field, and it was impossible to turn our heads without something incredible taking our attention.... the ex-Paddon AP4 Hyundai, the AP4 Barina, about 20 BDA Escorts including Martin’s Rossendale car and the Irish ‘Blue Baby’ of Frank Kelly with the bonnet up.

After catching up with a few Aussies meandering around in a state of rally-shock, and after the autograph session was over, I introduced myself to Rosemarie and Frank Kelly.

RallySport Magazine had done a feature article on Frank late in 2016 and the coverage from that, combined with a firm invitation from the NZ organisers to head to the southern hemisphere,

Andy Martin came to blows with a rock on the Whare Flat stage on Sunday morning.

(Photos: Peter Whitten)

Tom Smith with one of his favourites at the Oamaru Motor Museum.

convinced the family the trip was worthwhile.

The promo start had such a positive and happy vibe, promising a fantastic weekend of rallying.

Dinner at a bar/ restaurant nearby with the Whittens (Pete and Luke) topped off a fine day one and we were off to find a warm room and a glass of red to end the night.

Out and about on Saturday with Pete and Luke, the four of us were travelling in the Mighty Ssangyong Tivoli XLV, a pretty (!) mid-sized SUV we don’t get in Australia, but which handled the spectator duties admirably.

Three different spectator points later and after possibly the best ever range of locally

baked pies for lunch at Lawrence, the team headed back to Dunedin in time for the Super Special Stage around the Dunedin railway yards.

Always a crowd-pleaser, one might think that laps around the buildings on tarmac may not be exciting, but in front of a monster crowd of locals, the drivers see the red mist descend and really throw their cars around, drifting and Scando flicking wherever there is space.

John Spencer in his very quick Datsun 1600 was sent out immediately after local rally identity Mark Laughton in his V8 Avenger. Being good mates, the race was on and Spencer did his best to catch the V8 in the lap and a half available - to no avail. What a race!

Frank Kelly and local (Irish) co-driver Noel Moloney were frustrated after a minor off saw them bellied out during the day, before being towed back on.

Frank made it up to the crowds with spectacular driving in the mega-HP blue Escort.

With the action over by abut 6pm local time, it’s gentleman’s hours in APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 27

REPORT: OTAGO RALLY SPECTATING

The Otago Rally finish at the beautiful Dunedin Railway Station. (Photo: Tom Smith)

town and another dinner at one of the huge number of establishments in Dunedin was called for. Unfortunately, Saturday night in Dunedin is a very busy time and without a booking, most restaurants are full to the brim.

Pete J and I headed off to the Rally HQ to source some rally merchandise and after some negotiation with the Clerk-of-Course , a deal was done for t-shirts, beanies and a very nice softshell jacket. unday brings an earlier start and we headed out to Whare Flat Road, barely 20 minutes outside Dunedin. A 20 minute walk in from the end control saw us next to a water splash/causeway which promised some great action and shots for the photographers.

Car 17, the VW Polo AP4 car of Andy Martin, hit the causeway a little wide and slid into a very large rock on the outside, resulting in a large thump and a toss of the little car, ending up facing the wrong way on the other side of the water.

Quickly regaining his composure, the driver headed off, only to find his right rear wheel locked. The impact had shattered the rear disc, locking the wheel. A quick jack-up and wheel off, discard the bits and back on the road,

S

28 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

driving the couple of kays to the finish of the stage.

Pete J grabbed a piece of the very hot disc as a souvenir, packing it safely in his ‘BBQ Shapes’ box. About 30 minutes later the metal was still warm to the touch.

More great spectating and a walk through the service park on the banks of the beautiful Lake Waihola followed, before we travelling to the Kuri Bush Stage – a must-see – before heading back to the finish at the historic Dunedin Railway Station.

With the champagne spray came the realisation that the rally weekend was nearly at an end.

Pete and Luke had to head off for their flight out of Dunedin that afternoon, so Pete J and I hit the Rally HQ, hoping to buy some tickets to the event dinner at the town hall that night, always a great function.

With no luck at Rally HQ – everyone was busy finalising the rally proper – we had a call from Ed Mulligan who had a few spare tickets to unload. Thanks Ed! A great night at the Dunedin Town Hall presentation saw trophy getters in all classes be given an opportunity to speak, and some great onstage interviews by the MC, Brian Kelly.

Markko Martin and Stephan Prevot,

Frank Kelly and Noel Moloney, and Simon Evans and Ben Searcy all added to the entertainment in their own styles.

With the formalities over by about 10.30, it was off to bed for some of us to make the early wake-up on Monday morning, thanks to an 8.00am departure from Dunedin International Airport.

The Octagon in Dunedin was primed for the rally after-party with one particular favourite bar proclaimed ‘open until it shuts’.

There were lots of Aussies at the airport at that wee early hour next morning, all heading home to Brisbane or other parts of Queensland.

A comfortable flight home, a quick stop-off in the Brisbane Airport dutyfree shop before we hit Customs and a quick exit brought us back to reality.

Somehow I don’t think the Customs guys are too interested in a bunch of locals coming home from a four-day break watching a car rally in NZ. It was all over bar the memories for 2017, but this event sets the standard for a great rally weekend away.

Easy flights across the Tasman, friendly people, great roads and wonderful countryside make the Otago Rally an annual event – at least for me.

BACK FOR MORE? Evans eyes Otago, Stanza return Story: TOM SMITH

F

ormer Australian Rally Champion, Simon Evans, spoke with RallySport Magazine immediately after the presentation finish of the Otago Rally, where he had competed for the first time in Darryn Snooks’ beautifully prepared Datsun Stanza.

In a relaxed frame of mind, Evans gave the event a very positive scorecard and was in awe of the incredible roads on offer in the Otago region.

“The whole event is great,” Evans declared. “These roads are pretty special, and we knew coming here was going to be a challenge against the Escorts.”

Admitting that the Stanza was not quite on the pace, Simon explained that he had only sat in the car a matter of weeks before the event.

When Darryn Snooks offered the drive, the newly built Stanza had barely turned a wheel, but it’s fair to say that Evans and co-driver, Ben Searcy, gave it a fine development test over the twoday event.

“I was quoted before the event as

saying I was going to drive the wheels off it and if I needed to, knock the rear quarters off the car in the process!

“Darryn gave me a call and said it would be good if I didn’t actually do that!” Simon said with a smile.

Needless to say, the car finished the rally in perfect condition, and without a scratch.

Evans declared the car full of potential and has ideas for minor improvements to increase the competitiveness of the vehicle.

The Stanza has been set up for 14” wheels, unlike much of its competition, and Simon says that 15” wheels would obviously permit a larger brake set-up, and improved stopping power.

Some suspension set-up tweaking during the event certainly improved the feel of the car, but further refinement will follow.

With Simon’s 2017 competition plans in limbo and the black GC8 Subaru sitting in the shed, the popular

Australian hinted strongly that more appearances in the Nissan at home could be on the cards this year.

“More time behind the wheel will make a huge difference,” he said. “I reckon we can make this thing into a much more competitive package.”

While not in the trophies for the event, Simon was invited to speak at the post-event dinner and, in his inimitable style, had the room in fits of laughter.

With serious reflection he applauded the event and organisers for a brilliant rally, and suggested that a return visit could be on the cards.

Simon Evans would like to further develop the Stanza and return to Otago in 2018.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 29

REPORT: 2017 OTAGO RALLY - NZRC 1

T

he opening round of the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship has been run and won at the Drivesouth Otago Rally, yet it would still take a brave person to bet the house on someone in particular taking out the championship.

David Holder and Jason Farmer took victory in the Hyundai AP4+, but six drivers won stages and without time penalties, the event would have seen a different winner and a winning margin of just four seconds after 280 kilometres of special stages.

The most eagerly anticipated championship in years saw as many as 10 realistic chances for outright victory, while the class battles all offered depth. In all, 52 championship cars would cross the start ramp.

DAY 1

The opening stage saw Andrew Hawkeswood and Jeff Cress set the pace in their Mazda 2 AP4+, covering the 11.88 kilometres three seconds faster than defending champion Holder, with Sloan Cox and Sarah Coatsworth’s Mitsubishi Evo 10 only a further three tenths of a second further back in third.

It was the second stage where Hawkeswood made his

move with a time 9.4 seconds faster than Rhys Gardner and Ally Mackay, who would move themselves into second in another Mazda 2, while another third fastest time secured third for Cox. Hawkeswood’s run of stage wins stopped when he clipped a corner and nearly rolled, allowing Glenn Inkster and Spencer Winn to take the stage win in their Skoda Fabia AP4+, which saw them move into third behind Holder.

The results across the 42km were incredibly tight, with Inkster, Graham Featherstone/ Dave Devenport (Evo 7), Holder and Hawkeswood all separated by 3.2 seconds.

By the time the teams had made their way to service, plenty of drama had struck right throughout the field. One of the big note casualties was Matt and Nicole Summerfield, with gearbox failure 5.5km into stage one, while Clint Cunningham’s debut of his Ford Fiesta didn’t last much longer before his engine dropped onto two cylinders.

Then, in stage three, Darren Galbraith’s brake problems saw his Evo 8 off the road for a minute and a half, gearbox Photo: Geoff Ridder

30 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

HOLDER

... but Hawkeswood and Gardner Story: BLAIR BARTELS Photos: GEOFF RIDDER, PETER WHITTEN

R HOLDS ON

r push him all the way

David Holder pushes the Hyundai i20 AP4+ hard, on his way to victory in the Otago Rally.

(Photo: Peter Whitten) APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 31

REPORT: 2017 OTAGO RALLY - NZRC 1

Rhys Gardner, Mazda 2

problems saw Andy Martin’s VW Polo roll, and Josh Marston’s new Holden Barina AP4+ suffered engine failure.

The 32km of Glendhu, stage four, were not the longest of the day, but the most treacherous through a mixture of forestry and public roads. A stage win saw Holder take the rally lead with Hawkeswood slipping to second, and well within the clutches of third placed Gardner.

Worse would follow for Hawkeswood when he found a cracked oil cooler on the touring stage. Although able to repair the problem, he clocked in five minutes late and with it, 50 seconds of penalties.

Other front runners striking drama in the stage included Cox with a puncture, and Emma Gilmour/Anthony McLaughlin (Suzuki Swift Maxi) who retired after the stage, having become stuck in second gear.

Once Holder hit the lead, he would hold onto it for the day’s remaining three stages, despite a Hawkeswood charge seeing him win all three.

A superb drive from Gardner in the older Mazda 2 AP4+ car saw him in second, while Hawkeswood would just pip Inkster for third on the final tarmac super special stage.

A penalty for lateness en-route to the final stage would see Inkster drop a further spot to Featherstone, the pair in fourth and fifth overnight.

Class battles saw Dylan Thomson and Amy Hudson lead the NZRC two-wheel drive class for front-wheel drive cars under two-litre, after early leaders Ari Pettigrew/David Calder had a rock pierce their radiator and consequently overheat the engine, ending their event.

Chris MacLean and Sarah Brennan were second after a strong day, with 32 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

Andrew Hawkeswood, Mazda 2

Frank Kelly, Ford Escort.

Glenn Inkster, Skoda Fabia

Graham Featherstone, Lancer Evo

Robbie and Amy Stokes third. Drama hit Jack Hawkeswood, who rolled in stage two, and Max Tregilgas, who lost close to half an hour with an electrical gremlin.

Open two-wheel drive saw an early battle between Frank Kelly/Noel Moloney and Anthony Jones/Tanya Gwynne in a pair of modern powered Escorts, until Kelly slipped off in stage four.

Jeff Ward/Murray O’Neill’s Hillman Hunter V8 was second after the opening day, with Jack and Brenda Williamson’s Suzuki Swift third after a raft of problems.

Historics were all about Regan Ross and Lisa Hudson in their Ford Escort as they headed off not only the best of the NZRC historic field, but also former WRC star Markko Martin on their way to sixth outright, including a fourth fastest time through stage four.

Defending class champions Marcus van Klink/Dave Neill were second in their Mazda RX-7, clear of the similar car of John Silcock/Richard Atkinson.

The Gull Rally Challenge saw Keith Anderson/Samantha Gray set the early pace in the ex-Paddon/Holder Evo 8, ahead of Jono Walker/Jeremy Dawson’s Evo 6.

Mechanical failures for both allowed Richard Bateman/Jordyn Smith into a class lead they wouldn’t lose, over Fred Merkin/Sandra Everson and Lloyd Owen/Jonty Brenssell, all in Evos.

The two-wheel drive side of the class saw Deane Buist and Karl Celeste take victory, also beating home the four-wheel drive cars, to lead home David Taylor/Pania Huntley and Daniel Alexander/Richard Burnett.

By PETER WHITTEN

Sloan Cox, Mitsubishi Evo Deane Buist, Ford Escort.

However, on the very next stage, Gardner could only achieve the 14th fastest time and Holder regained the lead, with Hawkeswood third, less than 14 seconds adrift.

The 47km stage through Berwick Forest was thought to be the deciding factor and correctly so with Cox, Holder and Hawkeswood all charging to the top three times, separated by just 2.3 seconds, with Gardner’s fourth fastest Carl Davies, Toyota Yaris

DAY 2

Day two would see Holder give up the lead on the opening stage with a spin, allowing Gardner into the lead for one stage, while a rejoining Gilmour set the pace in search of day two bonus points.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 33

REPORT: 2017 OTAGO RALLY - NZRC 1

Ben Hunt, Subaru WRX STI.

time a massive 40 seconds off the pace, meaning he would settle into third place.

Leaving the final service, teams had four stages to negotiate, but still there were stings in the tail.

First to fall victim was Inkster, who retired from fourth with engine failure, promoting Featherstone and Cox into the top five, although Cox would limp home with a sick sounding centre differential.

With the final results more or less settled, the Power Stage saw Featherstone take top points, heading off Summerfield by just a tenth of

a second, while Hawkeswood, Holder and Ben Hunt took the remaining bonus points.

But nothing would stop Holder taking victory, 45.9 seconds ahead of Hawkeswood, who was left ruing his 50 second time penalty, while Gardner’s NZRC return netted a solid third on his home event.

The NZRC two-wheel drive class saw Thomson take the win over MacLean and Tregilgas, who was fortunate to overhaul Stokes when he hit a rock.

Open two-wheel drive went the way of Jones, with Williamson in second after

Josh Marston, Holden Barina.

2017 Stadium Cars Otago Classic Rally 1. David Holder / Jason Farmer Hyundai AP4+ 2. Andrew Hawkeswood / Jeff Cress Mazda 2 AP4 3. Rhys Gardner / Ally MacKay Mazda 2 AP4 4. Graham Featherstone / Dave Devonport Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 7 5. Sloan Cox / Sarah Coatsworth Mitsubishi Lancer EVO X 6. Regan Ross / Lisa Hudson Ford Escort RS1800 7. Dylan Turner / Malcolm Read Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 9 8. Ben Hunt / Tony Rawstorn Subaru Impreza WRX 9. Deane Buist / Karl Celeste Ford Escort Mk2 10. Dave Strong / Bruce McKenzie Ford Fiesta S2000 34 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

2:48:38.0 +0:45.9 +2:03.4 +3:03.5 +4:02.7 +4:53.1 +5:06.4 +5:30.0 +6:19.4 +8:45.4

Ward failed to finish with computer problems.

Historics saw Ross take a dominant victory, but he was forced to concede for the outright classic rally by just 10 seconds to Martin, with Silcock second after van Klink rolled, and Tony Gosling was lucky to survive a fifth gear spin on Kuri Bush to take third.

While Holder and Hawkeswood hold a distinct advantage as the series heads to round two, the format of the Whangarei event is up there as the most challenging of the season.

Keep an eye out for the report next issue - the New Zealand Rally Championpship pis just warming up!

RALLY MATES

MIKKELSEN SET FOR 4TH HYUNDAI SEAT As we went to press, 2016 Rally Australia winner, Andreas Mikkelsen, was said to be on the verge of a signing to drive a fourth Hyundai i20 WRC from Rally Portugal onwards.

There had initially been talk that the Norwegian may replace Juho Hanninen at Toyota, but a deal with Hyundai now seems imminent according to British website Autosport.

"We are talking to everybody, but it's not just this year or next year - it's the future,” Mikkelsen said.

"It's looking positive and more positive than when we were talking last time in Sweden.

"We have developed our conversations a lot, it's going in the right direction," he told Autosport.

The Rally of Portugal will be held in mid-May.

Is Rally Australia winner Andreas Mikkelsen Hyundai bound?

Thanks to our 'Rally Mates' for their continued support of RallySport Magazine.

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APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 35

5 MINUTES WITH ....

5

. minutes with ..

Y E L K A O N A NORM

Norm Oakley is known to many across the sport in New Zealand, his name now synonymous with the Otago Sports Car Club and the alwaysimpressive Otago Rally.

Story: KATE GORDON-SMITH

How did you get started in motorsport?

What inspired/encouraged you to get involved in the sport?

I had a family connection with the sport with Dad having been heavily involved with the early Dunedin Street Races as long ago as 1953.

My first competitive experience was in a Vintage Car Club hill climb driving a 1935 Speed 20 Alvis in the 1970s!

After spending some years in Wellington and then overseas, I returned to Dunedin in 1985, joined the Otago Sports Car Club and bought my first rally car.

I competed in a range of hill climbs, trials, autocrosses and local rallies as well as becoming involved with club administration, serving as speed convenor for a while and then President for a couple of years.

Sport New Zealand (MSNZ), Gold Rally CoC and Steward.

What’s your current passion or commitment?

Most of all, it’s the friends I’ve made over the years and the camaraderie that exists, whether stewarding or running an event.

With the Otago Rally it’s been the opportunity to work with a great group of people, all volunteers, who have been committed to making the event as good as it can be.

There’s a good deal of satisfaction in being part of a team that has run a successful event, whether it be a rally, Dunedin Street Race or the Race to the

I like all aspects of the sport, but my main interest and passion has always been rallying. I’ve been part of the organising team for the Otago Rally for about 25 years, acting as Clerk of the Course (CoC) for about 20 of those, and helped grow the event over that time.

I was chairman of the rally commission for a number of years and am currently a Board member of Motor

What do you get out of volunteering in motorsport? What do you like the most, and what are the challenges?

The incredible success of the Otago Rally is down to the hard work and forward thinking of Norm Oakley and the Otago Sports Car Club team.

Photos: RedMAGAZINE Bull Content Pool | RALLYSPORT 36 - APRIL 2017

Tell us a bit about your club.

see for your club in the future?

Like all clubs, staying relevant in a changing world. The days of ‘club nights’ seem to be over and much of the social life that those evenings created has diminished.

However, the club is well served by its current committee and is in a sound financial state.

The OSCC was founded in 1947 and was one of the original eight As a volunteer, members of the ANZCC, now MSNZ. It approximately how is a ‘traditional’, geographically-based many events have you motorsport club (as opposed to a special interest or one make club) that been involved with has an active competition programme over the past year, and centred around hill climbs and previous years? autocrosses.

The club was heavily involved with the early Dunedin Street races and ran the first Otago Rally in 1976.

Keen to keep up with Kiwi motorsport It has a stable news from the sport’s New Zealand membership governing body, MotorSport NZ? and runs a hotly contested speed Simply subscribe to their bi-monthly championship.

What challenges and opportunities do you

In the last year: numerous meetings to organise the Otago Rally, plus the weekend itself, helping at three or four other rallies, a couple of stewarding appointments, MSNZ Board meetings.

Over the last 30 years: perhaps about 25-30 rallies as CoC, five years as CoC at Race to the Sky, several years as CoC for the Dunedin Street Race, plus a whole lot of other stuff!

Photos: Geoff Ridder, Peter Whitten

Sky. As a Board member of MSNZ it’s been the opportunity to contribute at a higher level.

The challenges include trying to keep events fresh and innovative, finding the volunteers, and the funding to run the event.

e-mag, Accelerate, or read the latest issue online.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 37

REPORT: RALLY MEXICO - WRC 3

MEEKE BOUNCES BACK

By MARTIN HOLMES

38 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 39

REPORT: RALLY MEXICO - WRC 3

K

ris Meeke’s fourth WRC career win suddenly put Citroen back into championship contention for 2017 on Rally Mexico.

This was dramatic for various reasons, firstly because of a chaotic situation when the Friday route was shortened because of logistical problems after the Ceremonial Start, then a remarkable series of technical misfortunes for nearly every top crew on the first stage on the Friday.

Lastly, an incredible accident for Meeke within sight of the flying finish of the last stage almost saw him throw victory away.

Sebastien Ogier hung on to second place, leaving Mexico with M-Sport leading both the Manufacturers’ and now also the Driver’s series.

Citroen’s victory represented the fourth successive WRC win for a different manufacturer.

There was a very small entry. Only 24 cars arrived, the number already bolstered by entries from the FIA’s regional NACAM championship, without whom there would have been only 18.

Low level entries are nowadays endemic on long haul rallying and a characteristic which has recently extended into the FIA’s regional championships in Africa and the Middle East.

Zero points for quantity, but almost maximum for quality, however. Half of the whole field were World Rally Cars, 11 of which were 2017 version cars, and each team proved to be competitive on this rally. At the end of Friday each team had a car in the top four places.

Another second place for M-Sport’s Sebastien Ogier.

Ott Tanak was fourth, continuing his good start to 2017.

Mexico was Toyota’s first hurdle with the new Yaris WRC.

40 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

T

he event started with the news that Elfyn Evans’s DMack sponsored 2017 Fiesta WRC had a five-minute penalty for requiring an engine change after scrutineering. It meant that from the second full day onwards he was running first or second car on the road, and was only able to recover to ninth place overall.

DMack supplied new run-flat gravel tyres and Evans won three stages, a total beaten only by Neuville and Meeke.

The second event drama came on the Friday. Close to the start of the event the organisers had negotiated a deal with the Mexico City authorities to hold a Ceremonial Start coupled with a couple of runs round a downtown stage, right in the centre of the city.

Cars were transported down from Leon and apart from inclement weather the activities in the city went well.

There was, however, a serious road accident which blocked the highway for the return trip and the transporters were badly delayed, arriving too late for the cars to be offloaded before leaving for the first loop of stages.

Like in Argentina 2007, it meant rescheduling the route and this time two major stages were lost.

Not for the first time, Kris Meeke took advantage of a golden opportunity. Like his victory in Portugal in 2016 after running 13th on the road on Days 1 and 2, and then his win in Finland after running eighth on Days 1 and 2, his lack lustre performances in the WRC earlier this year meant he again started with a highly advantageous starting position.

He used this benefit to full effect, coupled with another golden opportunity. He had a trouble free run on the first representative stage on the event when all the other top drivers had technical trouble, launching himself into a lead he held for the rest of the event.

This was the first time the 2017 World Rally Cars faced technically challenging conditions, which combined heat and high altitude with long twisting, slow stages, leading to overheating in rival cars.

Once the shock of these troubles died down, the rest of the event was very much predictable. There were tyre choice dilemmas created by the preferences of drivers to drive on the faster, but less robust, soft compound tyres, while the tyre suppliers (which in effect means Michelin) dictated that hard compound tyres would overall be more suitable on this event, and drivers struggled with worn out tyres.

And of course there was another last minute panic for Meeke. This time he went off the road at the end of the final stage, regaining the stage after a detour through a track-side car park, happily retaining his lead.

“I got caught out on a bump after the jump at a fast right. I’m a lucky boy, a lucky, lucky boy. Okay, it’s certainly one way to finish a rally, but okay, we didn’t need that ...” Meeke said.

“Trying to find my way out of the parked cars and trying to find a gap in the hedge, a lot of things went my way.”

suffered fuel filter problems at the same time and place, with Dani Sordo suffering time-wise most of all.

Top Hyundai driver nearly all the way was Thierry Neuville, in third place behind Meeke and Ogier, but Hayden Paddon could not make competitive times.

Ogier only lost his chance of pressuring Meeke midday Saturday when he spun.

As the rally progressed, however, the team in trouble was Toyota, as Jari-Matti Latvala struggled to recover from his running order handicap as championship leader to run first car, suffering badly.

His teammate, Juho Hanninen, who had been leading after the Thursday

super special stages in Mexico City (his times achieved before heavy rain fell), struggling as he was feeling unwell.

Other excitements were when Stephane Lefebvre slid irretrievably into a ditch in the second Citroen, and a roll by the private 2017 Ford driver Lorenzo Bertelli. here were no WRC3 entries, only one entry (the Mini of Valeriy Gorban) in WRC Trophy, and five in WRC2.

The most exciting battle of the whole event was between the Skoda of Pontus Tidemand and the Ford of Eric Camilli, with Tidemand entering the final morning with only a two second lead.

Third was the Mexican Benito Guerra, the former FIA Production Car World

T

Dani Sordo charges through the super special stage.

The opening orthodox stage told almost the whole story of the rally, with Meeke controlling his dominant position.

There was a shock at a super special at the end of Friday’s route, when all three Hyundai i20 Coupe cars, which had been lying third, fourth and fifth behind the leaders Meeke and Ogier, APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 41

REPORT: RALLY MEXICO - WRC 3 Rally Champion on his first event in an R5, which was plagued (like with many others) with brake troubles.

In the Manufacturers series M-Sport extended their lead over Toyota to 36 points in the Drivers series Ogier was ahead of Latvala by eight points, with Ott Tanak third.

In WRC2 Tidemand, following successive victories in the category, took the lead in the series, with Camilli in second, ahead of former leader Andreas Mikkelsen.

Thierry Neuville was the best placed Hyundai in third.

2017 Rally of Mexico - WRC round 3

Winners are grinners: Meeke and Nagle celebrate.

1. Kris MEEKE/Paul Nagle 2. Sebastien OGIER/Julien Ingrassia 3. Thierry NEUVILLE/Nicolas Gilsoul 4. Ott TANAK/Martin Jarveoja 5. Hayden PADDON/John Kennard 6. Jari-Matti LATVALA/Miikka Anttila 7. Juho HANNINEN/Kaj Lindstrom 8. Dani SORDO/Marc Marti 9. Elfyn EVANS/Daniel Barritt 10. Pontus Tidemand/Jonas Andersson

Citroen C3 WRC Ford Fiesta WRC Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Ford Fiesta WRC Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Toyota Yaris WRC Toyota Yaris WRC Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Ford Fiesta WRC Skoda Fabia R5

3h.22m.04.6s 3h.22m.18.4s 3h.23m.04.3s 3h.24m.22.9s 3h.25m.37.5s 3h.26m.44.9s 3h.27m.10.8s 3h.27m.27.3s 3h.30m.46.4s 3h.32m.56.5s

A solid fifth place for Hayden Paddon in his Hyundai i20.

42 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

REPORT: EUREKA RALLY - VRC 1

Borrowed car no problem for Arron Windus F

ollowing a last minute deal only hours before the ceremonial start to run Craig Brookes' old Subaru, Ballarat local Arron Windus and co-driver, Steve Fisher, won the opening round of the Focus on Furniture Victorian Rally Championship at the Eureka Rally from March 17-19.

The goldrush city of Ballarat played host to two days of competition covering 220 competitive kilometres across 18 special stages, utlisiing the fast forestry roads of Wombat Forest to the east, and Enfield State Park to the south.

Before tackling the relentlessly fast forestry roads, the event began with a relaxed atmosphere as the 38 crews mingled with locals for the ceremonial start on Friday evening in the heart of the business district.

Saturday’s action got underway with Australia’s international rally ace Brendan Reeves and co-driver Ben Searcy (Subaru) setting the early pace, winning all four morning stages to open up a 37.2 second lead over Glen Raymond/Kate Catford (Subaru), with Windus/Fisher a further 25 seconds in arrears.

The returning Stephen Raymond and Luke Simpson (Subaru) kept the trio ahead honest with a string of competitive times to finish the opening loop fourth, and less than a second ahead of the leading Mitsubishi of Marcus and Scott Walkem in fifth.

Reeves continued his dominance, winning stages six and seven in the afternoon, but the rally would soon turn on its head when he ran out of brakes in SS8 and subsequently retired.

Glen Raymond’s opportunity to jump into the rally lead was short lived though when a fuel pump issue cost him more than a minute on SS9, dropping him to second behind the consistent Windus.

Story & Photos: CRAIG O’BRIEN He would eventually finish the heat 53 seconds behind. His brother, Stephen, encountered a fuel surge problem in the afternoon stages, resulting in his retirement from the event and lifting the Walkems to third.

With no wind and very dry conditions, the hanging dust, which had caused problems for Saturday’s stages, peaked to near impossible visibility levels for White Swan 1 on Sunday morning.

Windus/Fisher were one of the worse effected crews, dropping 36 seconds to Reeves/Searcy, who returned for heat two following overnight repairs. A bent lower control arm further compounded Windus’ morning.

Further down the field, Jackson Evans showed plenty of the speed and a spectacular driving style reminiscent of father Simon, in a frontwheel drive G2 Volkswagen Polo. In his VRC debut, he lost fourth gear early on Saturday morning, before retiring with a broken throttle cable on Sunday afternoon.

Our Auto Rally Series graduates Luca Giacomin/Brett Williams (Subaru) set

a string of top 10 times throughout and looked set for a strong finish until losing an argument with a tree on the penultimate stage.

A faultless and committed drive yielded Reeves a dominant heat two victory, winning all eight stages, almost two minutes clear of Raymond/Catford and Windus.

Despite winning 14 stages, Reeves' retirement in Heat 1 dropped him out of contention for the overall win, leaving Windus to collect his third career VRC round win, by 19 seconds from Raymond.

In the 2WD competition it was a tussle between the two Walker Motorsport Escorts with each grabbing a heat win, but it would be Grant Walker/Steph Richards who would ultimately come out of top ahead of Luke Sytema/Adam Wright.

In the new Fiesta Rally Series, Nathan Berry/Rian Calder (pictured in action below) showed incredible pace all weekend to take the honours and 8th outright.

Anthony Alexander/Paul Dobson were first Excel home in the OurAuto Rally Series.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 43

REPORT: TOUR DE CORSE - WRC 4

THIRD TIME

LUCKY FOR NEUVILLE

By MARTIN HOLMES 44 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

B

y the end of a dramatic Tour de Corse, all four teams had now won a world championship rally this year.

After disappointments on both Monte Carlo and Sweden, Thierry Neuville brought Hyundai a win with a 2017 car, but victory only came after Citroen driver Kris Meeke had led the way for half the event, when world champion M-Sport driver, Sebastien Ogier, was chasing him hard.

Meeke’s engine blew up and Ogier’s hydraulics and electrics faltered. This gifted Neuville the win his team craved.

No fewer than five of the 11 top WRC team drivers ran under Rally 2 rules, due to mechanical and driving errors which afflicted both M-Sport and Citroen, while Toyota also had driver related missed stages.

Neuville’s teammate, Dani Sordo, had been lying second before being passed

by Ogier on the final stage, despite suffering from hydraulic troubles like the other M-Sport drivers Tanak and Evans, which left his Fiesta down on power before the Power Stage, with no anti-lag, locked differential and no handbrake!

Latvala’s fastest time on the Power Stage gave him fourth place overall and enabled him to hold on to second place, behind Ogier, in the Drivers’ championship, while M-Sport still heads the Manufacturers’ charts.

Craig Breen once again finished best Citroen driver, this time fifth ahead of Hayden Paddon, who had an unhappy rally.

For the second time this season, Andreas Mikkelsen was unbeatable in WRC2 and has got himself into the top 10 of the Drivers’ standings; Raphael Astier won WRC3; Nil Solans won JWRC, and Romain Dumas won R-GT. n many ways, this was perhaps the most anticipated event of the season, the event which is recognised as the purest all-asphalt rally in the sport. The stages averaged over 30km in length, a test as much for the physical efforts of the drivers as the reliability of the cars.

This year’s event was also the first time that the exciting looking low slung 2017 World Rally Cars were sent out in the environment in which their dramatic designs could be shown to best effect.

Citroen now followed suit with Hyundai and M-Sport and came out with three 2017 cars for the first time, only Toyota fielded just two cars.

Given the amount of testing decreed for teams, what was surprising was the extent of unreliability shown by some of the teams, but the strangest

I

A third second place sees Ogier retain the WRC lead.

Finally Thierry Neuville took his first victory for 2017.

aspect through the event was the unpredictable behaviour of the cars.

A most frequent comment was that the times were bad, though the car felt good one day, and cars in a given setup could not work well another day!

Right from the start this was a twodriver battle between Kris Meeke and Sebastien Ogier, with Meeke winning three of the first day’s four stages and Ogier the other, with Thierry Neuville heading the also rans.

Neuville only started to be competitive on the second day when he suddenly won three of the four stages that day, which was when Meeke’s engine failed and Ogier started to have troubles with his car.

Ogier finally lost touch with Neuville on the final stage of Day 2, when he suddenly found himself more than

a half-minute behind because of hydraulic issues, which had already affected the Fiestas of Ott Tanak and Elfyn Evans.

Ogier started off the final morning hoping for the best, but the problems continued, while Neuville was far away in the lead. It took all of Ogier’s brilliance to nurse his unhappy car, with its intermittent problem, into second place. eeping the cars working was one thing, keeping the cars on the road, even in the ideal conditions, was another.

Ogier’s teammate, Tanak, went into a ditch on the first morning, Juho Hanninen then went off in the second Toyota, while Stephane Lefebvre in the third Citroen lost a wheel when he impacted a bridge.

K

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 45

REPORT: TOUR DE CORSE - WRC 4 rallies this year, but third time lucky, all went right for him. ndreas Mikkelsen had no rivals in WRC2. An early challenger came from Eric Camilli, but Camilli hit a bridge, and this put Teemu Suninen into second place, albeit finishing one minute behind.

Fastest in Shakedown was Mikkelsen, ahead of Camilli and Kopecky. The Norwegian finished the first day only 20 seconds ahead of the unregistered R5 of veteran sportsman, 41 year old Stephane Sarrazin, who was on his first event since Corsica last year, driving another Fabia.

Mikkelsen said he had been careful: “It was impossible to commit because we had no gravel note crew. I backed off in every corner when I could see there was some dirt in the road. Not very enjoyable!”

Mikkelsen’s Skoda teammate, Jan Kopeky, held third place early on, but then suffered power steering trouble.

Bryan Bouffier retired from fourth place, while Simone Tempestini had gearbox trouble.

Through Days 2 and 3, Mikkelsen continued on his winning way ahead of

A

Looking back on the event, this was a rally of two distinct halves. The first half saw Kris Meeke completely in command, not showing any of the little incidents which frequently cause his fans to worry, until the engine failed.

What was noticeable was the lack of confidence from Ogier when under pressure from Meeke.

The second half saw fans now worrying about Neuville, remembering his second day disasters on earlier

2017 Tour de Corse - WRC round 4 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Thierry NEUVILLE/Nicolas Gilsoul Sebastien OGIER/Julien Ingrassia Dani SORDO/Marc Marti Jari-Matti LATVALA/Miikka Anttila Craig BREEN/Scott Martin Hayden PADDON/John Kennard Andreas MIKKELSEN/Anders Jaeger Teemu SUNINEN/Mikko Markkula Stephane SARRAZIN/J. Renucci Yohan ROSSEL/Benoit Fulcrand

Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Ford Fiesta WRC Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Toyota Yaris WRC Citroen C3 WRC Hyundai i20 Coupe WRC Skoda Fabia R5 Ford Fiesta R5 Skoda Fabia R5 Citroen DS3 R5

3h.22m.53.4s 3h.23m.48.1s 3h.23m.49.4s 3h.24m.03.0s 3h24m03.1s 3h.25m09.7s 3h31m04.1s 3h.32m.10.4s 3h32m17.0s 3h35m50.5s

Clockwise from top right: Jari-Matti Latvala, Kris Breen and Dani Sordo. It was perfect weather for 46 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

Suninen, Rossel and Veiby.

WRC2 drivers Martin Koci and WRC3/ Junior driver William Wagner both crashed heavily, causing stages to be stopped while the injured crews were evacuated to hospital.

The final day saw three Skodas, two Fords and two Citroens finish in the top seven.

WRC3 had 13 starters, which included 10 running in the new Fiesta-based WRC Junior category, for which this was the opening round, and in which DMack became an official FIA rally championship partner for the first time.

Raphael Astier lead the WRC3 class in his Peugeot throughout, ahead of Junior driver Nil Solans, and Terry Folb and Nicolas Ciamin who swapped places for third and fourth on the final day.

Although there were no WRC Trophy cars, there were two R-GT entries for Romain Dumas (Porsche) and Francois Delecour (Abarth).

After the first day’s competition Dumas was a couple of minutes ahead of Delecour. Dumas eased his pace on Day 2 when his tyres overheated, which allowed Delecour to push hard, but he was unable to overtake his rival.

s Meeke, Andreas Mikkelsen, Elfyn Evans, Craig r tarmac rallying.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 47

INTERVIEW: FLEUR PEDERSEN

NZ’S FIRST LADY With well over 320 rallies under her belt, Fleur Pedersen is clearly New Zealand’s First Lady of co-driving.

As the long-term codriver of Brian Green, their 14 year partnership has seen them visit many parts of the world, with an impressive list of results.

By PETER WHITTEN

RSM: Our research on the impressive ewrcresults.com website shows you have done 151 events in your career. Do you have a record of them all, and how many have been in New Zealand?

FP: Yes I have kept a record, though it does have a few gaps and it needs updating from the last couple of years - this interview is a good prompt to do so! EWRC of course only lists the rallies that they have been able to access online results for, so my actual rally tally numbers far more than 151.

In New Zealand the number of rallies I have competed in is approximately 170.

Can you tell us how many in other countries?

Wales: 1 (WRC 2007), Sweden: 1 (WRC 2010), Finland: 2 (Arctic Lapland Rally 2009 and 2010), India: 2 (APRC 2003, 2004), Japan: 6, Indonesia: 6, Australia: 10, Thailand: 17, New Caledonia: 17, Malaysia: 33, China: 35 - 40 (I have a few gaps in my records from Chinese events)

“As time went on, I gained experience and knowledge, but I still look for any opportunity to learn - often from other co-drivers” You have co-driven almost exclusively for Brian Green in your career. How did this association come about?

Just over two thirds of my rallies have been with Brian. Back in 2002, a friend of mine who was co-driving in the Asia Pacific Rally Championship rang me to let me know Brian’s co-driver was going to be stepping down at the end of the year, and he encouraged me to ring Brian to ask him to consider me for the co-drive.

Having no experience of writing notes or rallying outside New Zealand, I didn’t really seriously consider this. However, my friend persisted in calling me until 48 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

I got the courage to make the phone call to Brian. At the time, I knew who he was and had probably met him a few times at New Zealand events. The initial phone call was very brief, maybe five minutes maximum, and I thought - oh well, I gave it a shot, never mind!

Two days later he rang me back and explained the challenges of the APRC, of competing in countries with extreme climates, strange foods, tough road conditions and foreign languages. After about half an hour of discussion, he asked me to co-drive for him on a trial basis for one rally in Thailand later that year - the following month in fact!

The rally itself was a fail as we blew the engine on stage three, but the partnership that followed has been a great success!

Brian is 29 years older than you - how has the relationship worked over the many years you’ve been together?

In the early days I certainly had a lot to learn from Brian! I was relatively experienced in co-driving in New Zealand events, but had never written pacenotes and never rallied outside of New Zealand. I learnt in lot in the first few years about how to cope with the challenging conditions overseas, how to write pacenotes from scratch, how to plan for recce, the differences between national and international rallies.

As time went on, I gained experience and knowledge, but I still look for any opportunity to learn - though this is often now from other co-drivers (for example John Kennard).

In our early days, the media often referred to our partnership as ‘Brian Green and his young co-driver Fleur Pedersen’. A number of years later it changed to ‘Brian Green and his regular co-driver Fleur Pedersen’, and now it is often ‘veteran Brian Green and his very experienced co-driver Fleur Pedersen’.

The partnership is at a point now where I can usually predict what he is going to tell me to write during recce, and I can tell his mood and frame of mind by his body language and actions the morning of a rally. I also know his favourite wine variety and desert, ha ha!

You’ve had some great results over the years, however, the partnership is clearly

Fleur Pedersen is a much travelled co-driver.

(Photo: Geoff Ridder)

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 49

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INTERVIEW: FLEUR PEDERSEN more than just about the results. Why?

We have won three FIA international rallies (Malaysia 2003, Malaysia 2004 and Thailand 2011) and we have also won 2 national championships together (Malaysia 2004 and2012).

Brian also enabled me to win the codriver’s championship in 2011 and 2012 in New Caledonia, though unfortunately both times he finished runner-up in the drivers’ championship.

We finished runners-up in the Malaysian Championship in 2013, though we did win the Group N class for the year. We won the Production Class of the APRC in 2012 (the year before it began being formally recognised by the FIA), and were third in the series for that year. We have won a number of other rallies outright, including a round of the NZRC in 2012 (incidentally making Brian the oldest driver to win a round of the NZRC), and achieved numerous podium placings in rallies from club level to international in the 14 years we have been a team.

The latest podium for us was achieved at Waitomo Rally last year, where we finished third overall. We also finished third in the Targa Campione Series in New Zealand last year, which is contested over all of the competitive days (points being awarded each day) of all three Targa events.

In Pahia in 2015 (Rally of the North) we battled a field of much younger drivers to finish second overall. We also picked up a second overall in the first round of the Malaysian Championship that year - a championship we should have had much better results in for the year, but we were let down by mechanical failures on our leased car.

However, to answer the question, the partnership is indeed about more than just results. Of course, we love to be on the podium and bring home the trophies with heads held high, but there is so much more to rallying and so much more to the partnership than this.

For us the 14 years we have been rallying together has been filled with so many adventures, so many new places and new experiences, new people to meet and friends to make worldwide.

We are both very passionate about rallying and both love actually being in the car and challenging ourselves on the stages.

We have mutual respect for the job that each other does, and we have a huge amount of trust in each other to do those jobs. If a mistake is made by either of us, an apology is made and we move on.

We also have fun and enjoy what we do.

At the end of a tough day, in the heat and humidity of Malaysia or the freezing snow and ice in Mohe, China, we can sit down and discuss the day, whether good or bad.

Co-driving for Brian has opened up opportunities I may never have otherwise had and I have been to places and had experiences I could

2012 Hawkes Bay Rally with Brian Green in the Ford Escort WRCar.

rallying’s greatest supporters. What makes him so valuable to NZ rallying?

Brian has been referred to from time to time as the grandfather of rallying in New Zealand. He is passionate about the sport and wants what is best for the sport in New Zealand.

He can see the ‘big picture’ and not just what Victory at Gisborne in is good for himself. He 2012 with Brian Green. has been involved in New (Photo: Geoff Ridder) Zealand rallying since closed stage rallies were introduced here, first as an organiser, then a competitor, and now he both competes in and sponsors the New Zealand Rally Championship.

Prior to sponsoring the NZRC, Brian also sponsored part of the ‘Xtreme’ series, and has often helped out individual competitors in various non-financial ways.

Brian is happy to share his experience of stages, rallies never have even imagined. or cars with other competitors and we We have rallied on the river that have shared pacenotes on occasions separates China and Russia while it was with New Zealanders at events frozen. We were the first New Zealand overseas. competitors to compete in the Arctic You’re clearly one of the most experienced Lapland Rally in Finland in 2009. We had the opportunity to go for a ride in a co-drivers in the southern hemisphere. Have Ford Focus WRC in 2010 on the snow Sliding an Evo on the whilst out testing 2007 Rally of Ireland, a for Rally Sweden. round of the WRC. I became the first New Zealand female to win an international rally in 2003 when we won the Malaysian International Rally.

Adventure and experiences are often worth so much more than just the final rally result.

Brian is one of NZ APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 51

INTERVIEW: FLEUR PEDERSEN to bring it in-line with NZRC Category 1 regulations, the weight has been optimally placed.

The car is very fast, but with the different dimensions to the Evos / Imprezas it is a more reactive or twitchy car. This has taken some time and experimentation with diff settings for Brian to get used to. I, however, loved this car from the first time I co-drove in it. I love the look of it, how my ‘office’ is set up inside the car, how the car feels on the road, and how fast it is.

What about your favourite event?

Green / Pedersen winning a round of the Malaysian series in 2012.

you had offers from other drivers over your career that you’ve had to turn down?

Yes. However, Brian has always told me that if the right opportunity comes up I should take it, so I don’t feel like I have been obligated to turn them down.

The offers I have had I have always given due consideration to. Whilst some have been with faster drivers, none would have offered the same experiences and adventures I have had co-driving with Brian.

Would you call yourself a professional co-driver, or do you have a “real” job? If so, what is it?

As much as I would love for co-driving to be my full-time job, I do have a “real” job in order to pay the rent each week.

I am a relief primary school teacher. I have three main schools I work in and pick up enough work to be more or less working full time when I am not away on rallies.

This vocation has allowed me to commit the time required to co-drive for the vast number of events Brian and I have competed in over the years.

Most of the events with Brian have been in Lancer Evos, but you’ve also sat in an Escort WRCar, Imprezas and more recently a Mitsubishi Mirage. What has been your favourite car, and why?

For me two cars stand out. The Ford Escort WRC and the Mitsubishi Mirage. The Ford Escort WRC was an outstanding car to co-drive in. Basically it did everything you asked it to do, and the harder it was driven, the better it responded!

Stopping distances were half that of anyother car I had co-driven in, and the bumps and holes were non-existent with the WRC suspension in it. And oh 52 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

the 6-speed sequential box in that car!

It only had a top speed of 186km/h, but boy did it get there fast! The launch off the start line pinned me back to the codriver’s seat.

I had the privilege of driving the car from a stage we had stopped in during the Nelson Rally in 2004 (two flat tyres, one spare) back to the hotel - a distance of around 50km. Whilst it was open road and therefore all road rules were obeyed, it is still an experience I won’t forget!

The Mitsubishi Mirage has some similarities to the Ford Escort WRC - the major one being that it is a car that was built to be rallied, not a road car turned into a rally car.

The Mirage is a New Zealand built, New Zealand engineered rally car, and it does not follow AP4 or Proto regulations, though there are similarities with both the AP4 cars and the Proto cars.

The Mirage has all the power of an Evo X but with far less weight. Because extra weight has been added to the car

Tough question! Lots of events stand out for different reasons. I always enjoy Rally Otago because it is so well organised and the roads are great down there. Rally Whangarei is another event I look forward to, for the same reasons.

I really loved Rally Ireland the year we did it, for the enthusiasm of the thousands of fans who turned out to spectate. Rally Thailand will always be a favourite as we are made to feel so welcome there by the organisers, and it was the first rally I did with Brian in 2002.

Also, it often coincides with my birthday, which the organisers acknowledge (more than once it has been cake at the prizegiving, with everyone singing Happy Birthday).

Arctic Lapland Rally was also amazing, and should be on every competitors’ bucket list.

Through all your overseas travels, what is the country you look forward to visiting most?

Another tough question as each country has things about it that I enjoy.

However, I would have to say Finland.

We have only rallied twice in Finland, but since then I have been there three times to watch the WRC. Every time I visit I feel incredibly at home there. Maybe it is their love of Contesting the Mohe Rally on a frozen river during a busy 2012 season.

Fleur's 2017 season started with the Otago Rally in early April.

(Photos: Peter Whitten, Geoff Ridder)

rallying? Finns are incredibly hospitable people, and I have many Finnish friends who I love to catch up with when I am there. One family have been especially hospitable every time I have visited and I always feel like they are my Finnish family when I am staying with them.

They now actually own a pub on the way into one of the Rally Finland stages!

It is also very easy to make new friends on the side of a rally stage in Finland, as everyone wants to talk to you when they realise you are not from Finland. On my last visit in 2015, saying I am from New Zealand was an immediate hit with the popularity and success of Hayden and John.

What have been the three biggest highlights of your career?

Winning the Malaysian International Rally in 2003 - our first win together, first international win for both of us.

Winning the Thailand International Rally in 2011, on our 10th Rally Thailand together and after a number of previous podium finishes there (including a second overall one year after we had been leading going into day two, but experienced a mechanical failure).

Arctic Lapland Rally 2009. This was our first experience of a true winter rally, and the rally is run to the north of the Arctic Circle, meaning limited daylight hours and a surreal kind of twilight for some of those hours.

The whole adventure actually began a couple of months before over a few beers in Thailand. After helping out a Finnish driver at Rally Thailand in 2008, the suggestion was made that we could come and use his car for the Arctic Rally, he would take care of everything, and in return he would come and do an event in New Zealand with the same deal applying.

The entire experience was amazing.

The team looked after us well, and the friendship has continued long after the rallies involved (this is the friend who has the pub!).

The organisers and local media were surprised and thrilled that two Kiwis would travel all that way to do the rally, and made quite a fuss of us. We put the car into a snow bank and got stuck three corners into our first test run.

We got to watch Kimi Raikkonen have his first ever drive in a rally car, we met Tommi Makkinen, along with a couple of famous ex-F1 stars, and in amongst all that, despite an off-road excursion in stage three (of which we received the famous Finnish spectator rescue, spectators complete with their own towing straps and snow shovels), we managed to finish our first ever snow rally. Crossing that Finnish finish ramp was quite an achievement!

And finally, what does the competition future hold for Fleur Pedersen?

At this stage I can only confirm the

upcoming season. Currently we have plans to compete in the NZRC and the Targa series in the Mirage, with the possibility of another couple of events in this car also.

Brian has rekindled his love of Ford Escorts so watch this space for something to happen involving one of those.

As far as future plans beyond 2017? I certainly have no intentions of retiring from co-driving any time soon. I hope that I can pass on my experience, whilst at the same time keep furthering my own experiences.

Where this might be and who this might be with remains to be discovered!

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 53

INTERVIEW: HANNU MIKKOLA

THE FLYING FINN At the 2003 Otago International Classic Rally, Finland’s Hannu was the star attraction, with the then 60-year old contesting the event in a Ford Escort.

While he led for much of the rally, a last day punctured eventually relegated hin to fourth place.

Peter Whitten interviewed his childhood hero before the rally got underway.

I

t was a sound like no other. A low growl - almost like a wild animal -but rising and lowering in pitch as it appeared closer, only to fade into the distance. Suddenly it appeared, blinding me as it roared towards me. The sound rose to fever pitch as the bright white lights quickly turned to red and the beast finally departed into the distance, spitting flames and throwing rocks the size of golf balls.

It’s mid-1984 and as a youngster I’d just been scarred for life – Hannu Mikkola and the awesome 5-cylinder Audi Quattro had just made a life-long impression on my life!

It was the Rally of New Zealand in 1984. A cold - no, freezing - night when the frost had already settled on the ground at 7pm. Just outside Rotorua, Mikkola had rolled the Quattro and was desperately trying to make up for lost time. Cutting the corner, he snapped the directional arrow on the inside of the corner, and with half the arrow now wedged into the grille of the world’s most impressive rally car, Mikkola disappeared into the distance.

A quick glance at my dad made me realise it wasn’t just me - we’d witnessed a piece of rallying history, and Hannu Mikkola instantly became my hero.

That he didn’t win the rally was of little consequence - Mikkola was the man and the Audi Quattro was my dream car.

19 years later, I was sitting in the lounge at hotel in Dunedin, about to interview Mikkola as he prepared for the Otago International Classic Rally – driving a Ford Escort RS1800.

As I soon got to know Mikkola the man, as opposed to Mikkola the rally 54 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

driver, it was refreshing to know that he is one of the friendliest people you could ever meet. Our one-hour chat was filled with amazing stories and plenty of laughter as Hannu recalled the greatest moments of his long and illustrious career.

With a memory as good as you could find, the (then) almost 61 year-old Finn showed why he really is one of the legends of the sport.

PROFILE

Hannu Olavi Mikkola was born in Finland on May 24, 1942. He started rallying in 1963 and won the Finnish Championship in 1968 and 1974, and the British Championship in 1978.

After a successful stint in Escorts, where he finished second in the World

Championship in 1979 and 1980, he finally won the title at the wheel of the pioneering Audi Quattro in 1983.

The winner of 18 World Championship rallies and with 44 podium finishes to his name, Hannu Mikkola is one of the icons of rallying.

In a career that spanned 40 years, Mikkola had factory drives for Volvo, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Audi, Mazda, Opel and Subaru.

He retired from professional driving in 1993, but still competes occasionally when the urge gets the better of him.

Competing in New Zealand in 2003 was one of those times, and Mikkola proved that he’d lost none of his touch.

Hannu Mikkola in a Toyota Celica on the 1977 1000 Lakes Rally.

EARLY DAYS

Were your family interested in the sport, and did your interest stem from there?

No, nobody was interested. I had been driving cars since I was about 10 years old, so I was dreaming about it, but Finland had very hard times in the 50s and early 60s and you couldn’t buy cars.

My father was working for the company in charge of all the forests, to make sure all the paper mills were getting the wood in time. They had a lot of cars, but of course it was a tool for them, so it was very hard for my father to understand that you take a car to the roads and then drive flat out.

But there was rallying going on at this time in Finland?

Yes, and there were already successful Finns driving when I was following it. A near neighbour of ours named Osmo Kalpala had won the 1000 Lakes Rally three times in the 50s and he was a sort of role model for me.

It was a long story how I finally got started, but in any case I took the family car without them knowing and did a rally 200km from Helsinki.

I was fifth overall and won the junior class, and to my father’s surprise I brought the trophies home and he said “Who owns the car?”. I said I did, because he didn’t know that I’d changed the ownership into my name (laughs).

It was a planned thing, and it all started from there.

How old were you then?

I was already 21, but the whole focus was just to get the chance to drive.

the chance to drive the 1000 Lakes Rally in an Escort. Ford finished fourth and fifth with the Lotus Cortina in Finland in 1967 and I was third in a Volvo, so they knew me from then.

Ove Andersson, Bengt Soderstrom and Roger Clark were already winning with the Escort, but Roger told Boreham that he didn’t like to do the 1000 Lakes because he was awful there, so they contacted me. I was lucky enough to win it, and it all started from there.

That then gave you the opportunity to rally outside Finland?

I had already had the chance to drive the ’67 Monte Carlo Rally in a Lancia, and we were lying in sixth place on the

last night with two stages to go and the car broke, so it was heartbreaking. So I’d had a connection with Lancia before the Ford drive came along.

Bjorn Waldegard said that he remembered an unknown driver named Mikkola who was doing very well in the Monte Carlo that year.

I already knew who Bjorn was though!

I did a rally for Volvo, the Swedish Rally in ’68, and Bjorn was there with the Porsche and at that time I thought they were using pacenotes, but I wasn’t sure.

I always remember on one long stage Bjorn started one minute behind me and he passed me and I thought “this is not possible without notes”. We met

Mikkola won the 1970 World Cup Rally in a Ford Escort Mk1.

Was your aim to become a professional driver right from the start?

I never really hoped at the beginning that I could do so well, but from the beginning I had the speed, but there was a period of two years where I couldn’t find the money to do it and I was in engineer’s school.

But one of our family friends came to see my father and said to me, “Why don’t you drive?” I said “No money, no honey – I cannot do it”, but he had a Volvo at the time and asked if I could compete in that type of car.

When I said yes, he said I could use that car and could send the bills to him!

After that it took just three rallies until the Volvo importer was paying, so it all happened very quickly.

Did you finish your schooling?

In 1968 I finished my studies, but I already had a contract to drive, so I never did any honest work. I drove with Volvo (444, 544 and 142 models) until the end of 1967, but then Ford gave me APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 55

INTERVIEW: HANNU MIKKOLA at that time and we have been friends since.

THE FORD YEARS

Two years later, in 1970, you did the World Cup Rally and won for Ford. Is that still one of the biggest wins of your career?

That was a very good win, you know.

That was a hard rally. It had very long stages – the longest took 12 hours 21 minutes to drive. I think on that stage I had one boiled egg and one Coke on the way!

But it was not only one long stage, it was three or four of them: it was 280 kays and 400 kays and 450 kays, a 971km long stage.

How much did that win do for your career in the future?

It did a lot. Of course I’d already won ‘68, ‘69 and ‘70 1000 Lakes Rally and Austrian Alpine Rally. I made a lot of mistakes too, but I was able to win those rallies.

But you weren’t expected to win the World Cup Rally – from London to Mexico – because you were more of a sprint rally driver.

That’s right. I had a meeting with Ford boss Stuart Turner one morning when he came to my hotel room and offered me the drive. I don’t know why, because I was a young driver who was driving too fast and wouldn’t have done that rally otherwise, but in any case it worked out well.

Did the World Cup Rally win help you later when you became the first non-African driver to win the Safari Rally?

I don’t know if it helped. In ’71 we were there the first time with the Ford, but we had engine problems. It just happened, but I did have a lot of help from Gunnar Palm, my co-driver, because he had a lot of experience and was always trying to calm me down – he was like a broken record by the end of the rally!

Interestingly, you split up with Gunnar because, you said at the time, your personalities were quite different.

Yes, Gunnar is very much a PR oriented person and at that time I was very shy and I hated it.

To win the Safari back in 1972 was a much more important result then as the event lost some of its toughness over the years.

That was fantastic, and you know, London Mexico I didn’t really realise what I had done – I was happy that I’d won, but much later I realised the importance of that win. But then when I won Safari in ’72 I knew I’d done something very good.

You were a heavy drinker in your early days, but gave alcohol away as your career took off and your professionalism increased. Was that a major decision in your career?

In rallying in those days it was a sort of life where you do your job, and then

when that’s over you had maybe three or four weeks until the next event.

When you came home you had all your friends wanting to go out and celebrate and it was really getting out of hand.

I had to decide if I was planning to become a full time drunk, or a good rally driver! It was a hard decision, not only for myself, but to convince my friends that I’m not drinking any more. I must say the first 10 years are hell, and it’s okay after that!

You don’t drink alcohol to this day?

No, some people get a nice feeling from drinking it, and some don’t. Walter Rohrl didn’t drink either, but he’s been quite a fanatic on everything he’s done: skiing, driving, biking…

You first came to New Zealand to compete in 1973. Was that a strange invitation to come to the other side of the world to compete?

It was. It was Stuart Turner’s idea because he was always sending his drivers around the world, and in 1973 I didn’t have a big program so I was happy that he was asking me to drive.

Jim Porter was my co-driver at that time, but for a while it looked like Tony Mason would be coming with me.

Drivers and co-drivers seemed to swap around a lot more in those days though.

It wasn’t such a busy program. You didn’t have 12 or 13 rallies that you had to do. We did maybe four or five a year.

They were not World Championship events back then, but they were the

Mikkola was part of a 4-car Ford factory team on the 1979 RAC Rally.

56 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

from 1978-1980, but in between you drove for Toyota, winning the 1975 1000 Lakes in a Corolla. What was behind that drive, in what was an unproven car and an unproven team?

A factory Mercedes drive for Mikkola in 1979.

major events.

But at that time we’d always try to fit in the contract that they’d give a car to do the Finnish Championship, so I did those rallies on the side, which kept us busy. Then we did some extra rallies, like something in Jamaica, or something in New Zealand.

What are your memories of the New Zealand event in 1973?

It was a very hard rally. Seven days or eight days, I can’t remember, but every day doing more than 500km. The South Island was very tricky with icy roads.

I remember we were leading quite well and I slowed down because it was important to make a result.

Were the Escort days ones that you fondly remember?

You finished fifth after the penalty, and then won four times for the rest of the season.

Yes, and there I lost that one point!

When I asked the police they told me it was on a 70km road section. It was a snow-covered road all the way, so we don’t know if there were yellow lines or not.

That was very unfair, and when you think that it was enough to take the World Championship away from me ....

UNPROVEN COROLLA

You were with Ford from 1968-1974, and

I was doing something in South Africa and Fiat pulled out with their Abarth and I didn’t have a car to drive in the 1000 Lakes. I saw Ove Andersson in South Africa as he was doing the same rally, and I told him I didn’t have a car for 1000 Lakes.

Ove had the car but no money to run it, so I spoke to a dealer friend of mine in Finland and he put a package together to run the car. We had just four people to run the team, plus the co-driver and myself.

One of those people was Arne Hertz, who was driving a service car (and who eventually became Mikkola’s co-driver).

I got the car two days before the rally and went to test it. Although it didn’t have the power, it was a fantastic car to drive, so I thought maybe I had a chance. That year I don’t know why, but I was really practicing well – in two weeks I drove 10,000km over the stages, so I really learned them by heart.

We won the rally and then Ove came to Finland and he thought that we could get the 2-litre engine into that Corolla, which would make the car a winner, so I

Contesting the Morocco Rally in a Peugeot 504 in 1975.

Yes, it suited my driving style. I’ve seen many drivers in Escorts and some were driving more sideways than others, but it’s very hard to get that car to understeer, and that I loved. I hated a car that understeered.

I had some great battles with Ari Vatanen, although he was very quick, but he crashed a lot! Bjorn was much more consistent.

In the first World Championship, in 1979, Bjorn beat you by just one point. That must have been an enjoyable championship.

We actually talked about it before the season and we decided that we’d do the same amount of rallies.

There was a time when Peter Ashcroft (Ford’s team manager) asked me, because I’d already had two engine failures, if I’d like to have an extra rally, but I was stupid enough to say “No, we’ve agreed at the start of the year”.

But where I really lost it was in Monte Carlo where they gave me a five minute penalty because they said I passed a car over yellow lines on a road section. But they never said where it happened.

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 57

INTERVIEW: HANNU MIKKOLA signed a contract with him.

But that wasn’t the case. I had to drive the Celica then and it was a big, big car and I had a lot of troubles. We were developing it, but in two years when I did the first rally in England I was one and a half seconds per kilometre slower than Ari Vatanen and Russell Brookes in Escorts.

But I nearly won the RAC Rally in 1977 when Bjorn won in the Escort – I had a puncture in Keilder Forest and that dropped us down, but by then the car was much better.

Rally New Zealand 1979 in the famous Masport Escort.

(Photo: Martin Holmes)

Was that the right car, or should Toyota have stuck with the Corolla?

They should have been in the Corolla.

The Celica needed so much room when it was going sideways and we never got it sorted properly.

Waldegard said, “that’s the salary per rally!”

But when you drove a Celica in 1980 you later said it was good grounding for the Audi Quattro, because you couldn’t drive it too sideways, otherwise you’d lose too much time.

Similarly, by signing with Audi, you’ve had a fair impact on where the sport is today, and in what cars are being used the world over.

Yes, and with the Escort too, because I’ve never really driven very much sideways because I feel that you lose the speed. It’s good looking, but I try to keep the car a little bit straight.

The Celica didn’t have very much grip at all, and it went so easily sideways, so you had to try and keep it straight.

I was also with Mercedes in 1979 and 1980 as well. They were trying to offer a contract for the next year and I also remember it was one of the highlights of my career, I was having lunch with the Development Chief of Mercedes Benz and he said he’d heard I was moving to Audi.

“We sold that company,” he told me, “do I have to buy it back?”

Was the Mercedes a frustrating car to drive?

It was, but when you got the speed up it was a very strong car. I won the Ivory Coast Rally in it, and I very nearly won the Safari.

When you and Bjorn signed contracts with Mercedes you were being paid big money and really revolutionised the pay structure for rally drivers.

We are very good friends, Bjorn and I, and we played it together.

We knew that they would call him and that they would call me, so we agreed what we were going to say.

History has it that when the pair came out of discussions with Mercedes, Mikkola told Waldegard that he thought it was a good salary for the season. “No Hannu,” 58 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

AUDI DAYS

I’m sure Audi was the step that was very important for my career. Of course we didn’t know how it would turn out to be. The first six months was a lot of work.

What happened was that Bjorn and I were on top of the world with the contracts we had and I got a call from Audi. I had seen them, but it was with a very small team, front-wheel drive cars – a sort of third grade team.

There was a guy called Stockmar, and he said they had this four-wheel drive car that they’d like me to come down to see and sign with them for next year.

I thought it’s a waste of time to go down to Ingolstadt, but I had three or four days at home and just to be polite, I will fly down there and have a look.

Stockmar was waiting for me at the airport and he kept saying “And when we are doing this together” and I said “No, no, no, don’t count on it”.

And then they brought this first Quattro out in the forest, and it was under cover, and I had a drive of it.

It was just a normal road Quattro, so it wasn’t a rally car or anything, and I drove maybe half an hour.

So I said I’d like to have a few hours to think, and their idea was that I would drive half a year in the front-wheel drive Audi 200, and when the four-wheel drive car is ready I would drive that.

But I said, even without committing to anything, you can’t do it this way and you have to throw out this idea right now. Just concentrate on the four-wheel drive car.

I said I wasn’t so sure, but they had a list of the drivers who they thought could drive the car and they said I was the only one. They’d been following my career at Ford and discovered that I drove less sideways, and said it had to be me.

Mikkola won the WRC in 1983 during the Quattro revolution.

The awesome Quattro S1 on the 1986 Monte Carlo Rally. (Photo: Holmes)

I even called Arne (Hertz) and spoke to him about it, then I stayed overnight in Ingolstadt and had breakfast with Stockmar the next morning. I said: “Okay, if we can do it so that I can drive 1980 with which car I want (not an Audi), but I do 60 days testing and you have somebody who is doing the long distance testing.

“In September or October we sit down and decide if it’s going to work or not.

Just to show that I’m not just taking testing money and walk away, I’ll sign the contract for ’81 to drive it. But September/October, if we both think that it’s not going to work, I’m out of the contract.”

Did you initially think that it was a very big car to go rallying in?

Yes, that was a concern, and of course the turbo engine, as we’d never had a turbo engine in a rally car.

Everything was new – the company BOGE (who made shock absorbers), Kleber tyres, four-wheel drive, the team.

So when did you start to think that the car had real potential?

I knew, because we were in Greece, it was May…. no, the beginning of June, and we did a lot of testing. I could drive it faster than the Escort immediately on the wide roads, but when it was on the narrow road I never really knew within half a metre where it goes!

It was pulling and it was very

Mikkola and Ford mechanic Mick Jones.

(Photo: Martin Holmes)

unstable, with the limited slip diffs and how to have them and all that. I did the testing just after 1980 1000 Lakes on similar roads and still it was the same thing.

We realised that the front wheels were moving and all that, and when we got that right we went to Portugal to Algarve Rally as the zero car. I had been there the year before to drive David Sutton’s Escort.

The first stage was uphill, I think 24 kays or something, and we knew our times from the last year. Arne was with me and we went up the stage and we were one minute faster than in the Escort. We knew then that it was a good car, and it was quite easy to drive, so I could see that maybe this was the way

to go.

Despite the successes, you endured a lot of unreliability from the car and frustrations from the team’s performance. Was this something that was inbred into the team?

It was partly, and it was partly that when we got something reliable in the car we were testing the next new part.

It was too hectic and at times we were entering five cars in the one rally, so sometimes I felt that quantity was more important than quality.

Actually, I lost a lot of rallies because of technical problems, engine problems at the beginning and simple things that went wrong. In New Zealand one year we lasted just 2km into the first stage when the timing belt jumped!

APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 59

INTERVIEW: HANNU MIKKOLA Pushing the A1 Quattro hard on the Acropolis Rally in Greece.

There’s some famous footage of you at a service break in the 1983 1000 Lakes when you’re prancing around the car and looking at your watch as one problem after another surfaced.

That was a rally I will never forget.

That was the year Michele Mouton drove her car into the lake as well?

(laughter) Yes, she said “It’s burning”.

I said to her “Is it still running?” She said yes.

I said is there a lake next to you?

She said yes, so I said “Drive into it!” because I knew that you couldn’t stop the fire.

That was a rally, you know. First stage we landed after a jump – gearbox. We changed that, two and a half minutes I was behind. I drove flat out all night, next day, just as it was coming dark I was leading again.

And then the next stage, jump – turbo pipe. Lost 50 seconds and noticed that the engine mounting was broken, so the engine had moved.

I always remember it was an 85km road section and I knew it takes 40 minutes and I knew there would be a lot of police. So I said to Arne “Give me the map” and I looked at another road on the side and I went flat out. I got there on time and they changed the engine mount.

I went and drove that night and could not understand why I’m not fastest – I was just there, but couldn’t get the times. I was 30 seconds behind in the morning and I went to my favourite mechanic and said that I could see I had 60 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

turbo pressure, but it just doesn’t feel right.

So he went and opened the bonnet, and there’s a long turbo pipe, and he put his face right down over it and he found a small hole in the turbo pipe. He changed that, and then we were off!

We passed Stig two stages before the end and won the rally. It was my hardest win.

When you won the championship in 1983, was it satisfaction, or were you just relieved because you’d come so close in the past?

It was satisfaction, because I’d already decided that after ’84 I wouldn’t do that kind of program again. By then I’d been doing British Championships and World Championships – 17 or 18 rallies a year – and it was too much.

I had already told Audi that I would slow down, so it was almost the last chance to get the name on the books.

I had two years where the end of the season went well, the start of the season went well, but the middle was no good.

If I could have turned the clock half way, I would have been winning the championship more.

TEAM-MATES AND RIVALS

The media of the time built up a real rivalry between you and your team-mate, Stig Blomqvist. Was that real, or just media hype?

Stig is a completely different kind of person than I am and I think he was used to working alone, so it was much harder for him – in my mind, maybe not in his – to do the team work.

With Bjorn, when we did the testing

we worked together as that was the best way to do it, but with Stig he tended to work more for himself. I think it comes from the time when he was at Saab, but he’s a fantastic driver.

Was Walter Rohrl a bit like that too? And what about Michele?

Walter was very difficult to work with, you never really knew what he was going to do, or say, or think.

Michele was fantastic – she was something I don’t think very often we will see, she was so good!

There’s a small story: when she came to Audi they were trying to get Walter.

Walter got all the times in testing and knew everything, but he didn’t dare to do it. They thought it was a good idea to have a woman in the team when they were starting, so they asked Michele.

The last question Michele asked when they were discussing about the contract was: “Are you employing me as a rally driver or as a woman?” They were clever enough to say “As a rally driver”, so Michele said “Okay, I sign it”.

Did she adapt to the car instantly, or did it take time?

It took her six months to learn it and then the rest is history! She should have been World Champion in ’82, but the team just blew it. They blew it completely.

You had a big input into her car set-up, didn’t you?

Yes I did her lights, her suspension, I did everything. When we were driving it was always “Hannu, Hannu, it’s pulling to the left” or “It’s pulling to the right”.

But she still had to drive it and she did a fantastic job.

The last of the Quattros, the S1, had all the wings and spoilers and was the most awesome of all the Group B cars. What was it like to drive?

to think about what you were doing you’d be off the road.

We did quite well with it, like in Monte Carlo, but the whole thing then with the Audi was that it had a front engine and the whole engine was hanging out from the front wheels.

At the time it was Audi’s idea that we should use the same layout for the production cars as for the rally cars, but they had already built a mid-engined car that is now in the museum in Ingolstadt. It’s a very good looking rally car,

You know with the long Quattro, the old one, it was very difficult to get through the narrow roads of Corsica.

The whole short Quattro was done - I don’t know when, because I didn’t do any testing for it – it was very much a quick, quick, quick job, but then they started to test it and they noticed it was too short. It was very, very difficult to find the balance: the most difficult when you are in a bend and you Hannu Mikkola thrills the crowds at the Otago Classic have 400 horsepower Rally in 2003. in that car already and Photos: Peter Whitten you put the foot down it sits down and starts to understeer, and when you lift the back end comes around. You couldn’t get around the bend nicely. It was a very nervous car.

When you were doing 240 or 250 km/h the front would start to lift and you’d lose the steering.

Then we got a new engineer – an ex-racing car engineer – he saw what we have to do to try to save the car, and that was the wings and to get the aerodynamics right, and we did a lot of but I never had the chance to test drive work with that. it or anything.

Then, of course, we increased Were those days, the Group B era, just too the power and, finally, we had 550 crazy? horsepower in it. Actually I owned an Oh it was. But it was fun! Actually S1, but I sold it one year ago to Juha when you have a lot of power it’s Kankkunen because he’s got a museum easy to drive because you can correct and he likes to have it there, but it’s a everything with the power – you haven’t beast to drive. got the situation that when you come Was it literally a car you drove by the seat to a bend and put the foot down there’s of your pants? nothing there.

It took 2.7 seconds to 100km/h, and But I have one stage that I will never 9.4 seconds to 200! forget with the S1. I had some problems in the 1000 Lakes Rally and I came to I did testing for the last car in Greece, one of the legendary stages – it’s 26km when we pulled out in 1986, and at long, over the crests and very difficult. that time we had already this PKVW I did the stage in the early days in an gearbox with the two clutches and 600 Escort and the time was 12m52s or horsepower.

12m58s – that was a good time. With It’s funny, in the morning when I the S1 I did the stage in 11m32s. tested it I thought it had absolutely too That was the only time I had the much power, but in the afternoon I feeling that for part of the stage I thought maybe it could have a little bit wasn’t sitting in the car, I was sitting more! (laughs) somewhere else.

Walter Rohrl said that it was a car that you The wings just made the car that had to drive on your instinct – that if you had when you go into a bend it was pushing

down and down and you don’t find the limits really – you just go around the bends and the car’s going faster and faster.

Still people in Finland come to me and say that they were there: “When we could hear you coming 3km before, we knew you were trying”.

FAVOURITES

Over all the years, is there a favourite car – one that stands out more than the rest?

Escort, that is my favourite car. Audis and the other four-wheel drive cars, they were a little bit beasts to drive with their understeer – especially with the Audi as it comes from a front-wheel drive car.

In slippery conditions it was very difficult, and that was where Stig was so good. If you had ice or snow, you knew you couldn’t beat him because he had the experience from the Saab.

I still had in mind the Escort driving, and over the seven or eight years of four-wheel drive I never really thought that I mastered it.

Of your rivals, who were the toughest to beat over the years?

Markku Alen was very hard to beat – he was always “maximum attack”. Timo Makinen was one of the best also, he never really put a foot wrong and he was very consistent and very quick.

- PETER WHITTEN APRIL 2017 - RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE | 61

FEATURE: RALLY SHOW UK Frank York spent time with Ari Vatanen at the Rally Show in the UK.

Rally car heaven Story & Photos: FRANK YORK

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’ve always been a fan of Ari Vatanen, as many rally enthusiasts of my vintage probably would be

too.

He was the original Colin McRae, way before Colin was born. A master at his craft; daring behind the wheel; a gifted driver who was always spectacular, but who is also a humble and unassuming man.

Thus, the idea of building a replica of the iconic Rothmans liveried Ford Escort RS1800 was always going to be a great idea. What I didn’t realise at the time was just how much this idea would change my life.

As the new millennium dawned the project was launched. A donor 2-litre Escort GL Rally Pack was sourced and work began on creating a faithful replica of Ari’s famous mount.

We wanted to build a car that looked like the original, so a lot of research was needed. Back in 2000, the internet wasn’t as powerful as it is today, however it did provide some useful information.

Most of the research was conducted in the old paper based ‘analogue’ form!

Malcolm Wilson even sent original photographs of his Rothmans cars to 62 | RALLYSPORT MAGAZINE - APRIL 2017

me in the post …would that happen in the internet world of today?

I quickly found support from a chap in the UK that had just built a Rothmans replica, after noticing his car and story in a copy of ‘Fast Fords’, a British glossy magazine targeted at small Ford enthusiasts.

From that initial contact with Rob, in Essex, UK, we built a group of likeminded Rothmans Escort enthusiasts that stretched from England to Germany, and Ireland to Finland. These fellow enthusiasts either own and run genuine Rothman’s BDA/BDG Escorts, or have also built replica cars to honour the great man, Ari Vatanen.

Indeed, the Rothmans Escorts are probably the most recognisable rally Escort of the late 70s and early 80s era.

Up until the time where David Sutton ran the private Rothmans Escorts team, the official Ford works cars had carried a number of different colour schemes

and sponsors’ names.

Perhaps Roger Clark’s ‘Red Cossack’ sponsored Escort, or Hannu Mikkola’s ‘Eaton Yale’ Escort rank as the next most memorable in the Escort Mk 2 series. David Sutton and Rothmans brought continuity to the team colour scheme for a number of years. ast forward from 2000, and our small group of enthusiasts decided we would like to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ari Vatanen and David Richards winning the World Rally Championship in the Rothmans Ford Escort RS. The year would be 2006, and it is amazing to think that this all happened 11 years ago now. Historic rallying has

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grown enormously in the intervening period too.

We began putting our ideas together. The group decided that the obvious venue for marking such a celebration was “RallyDay” at Castle Combe. “RallyDay” is an annual celebration of rallying and has been a regular feature of the UK rally scene since 2000.

Using the classic Castle Combe race track just east of Bristol (about 90 minutes west of London), RallyDay has established itself as a must-do event for anyone interested in rallying.

Hundreds of rally cars are displayed and many rally cars are driven during the course of the day. It’s an action packed car show!

Numerous car clubs attend and show their road going versions of the great rally cars. I’ve never seen so many

“Hundreds of rally cars are displayed and many rally cars are driven during the course of the day. It’s an action packed show.”

Audi Quattros in one place at one time! The venue is complete with retailers and vendors that set up their trade stalls, and catering is plentiful. It’s a real carnival type atmosphere, in the way that the British do best. nd like the Goodwood Festival of Speed, you can rub shoulders with many of the great rally drivers and navigators, like Russell Brookes, Jimmy McRae, or Pentti Airikkala, and more.

With my fellow global Rothmans Escort enthusiasts (Rob, Sim and Alan from the UK, Davy from Ireland, Thomas from Germany and Jarkko from Finland), we chose this event as the place to come together as a group to mark this anniversary.

At the very least, it would be the first time that we would all be together and not just simply connected by

A

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FEATURE: RALLY SHOW UK daily emails and web addresses. When we first had the idea, little did we know that this idea would soon snowball into being the feature event of the whole of RallyDay. We approached everyone that we could find who was associated with the original Rothmans Rally Team, including David Sutton himself. Our ideas quickly gained support from David and the RallyDay event organising team. fter several meetings in the UK, we were able to secure wide scale support for the idea. An idea quickly turned to a reality and the ‘event’ was on. After much planning and more meetings, we had wide support and the basis for a 25th anniversary celebration, and a Rothmans Rally Team reunion.

As our plans grew, Ford UK agreed to provide some classic rally cars for display from its collection, and then David Richards and Ari Vatanen also agreed to participate. The rest of the Rothmans Rally Team were invited to join us too, including top mechanic Mick Jones and his crew.

Jumping on-board, the RallyDay organising team started using us as the drawcard for the event and featured Alan’s Rothmans car (the genuine Malcolm Wilson STW201R Escort RS) in all of the pre-event marketing.

Photographs of the car were used in all pre-event advertising and also on the cover of the official RallyDay souvenir program.

Working with the RallyDay organisers, we quickly locked in a prime location at Castle Combe raceway to display our cars and service vans, whilst David Sutton provided a huge corporate marquee where we could entertain guests and rally icons for the day.

The British National Motor Museum at Beaulieu is the home for Ari’s actual winning Rothmans Escort (VLE 756X) and is on permanent display amongst an amazing collection of cars.

The museum also agreed to remove the car from the exhibition and to loan us the car for the day. Rarely does the museum let any of its exhibits loose, so with David Sutton’s sponsorship of the whole show, this was another major achievement for our small group of enthusiasts.

We arranged to have Ari and David reunited with the car, and have them take the car for a few laps of the Castle Combe circuit as a feature of the day.

To prepare the car for its first serious run in a long while (it has hardly been used since winning the World Rally Championship in 1981), David Sutton’s mechanics changed the battery and all the fluids and then cranked it up. Still sitting on its original (25 year old) Pirelli

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slick tyres, it never missed a beat.

It started first time, however, it didn’t like sitting stationary with the engine running for too long. The temperatures quickly went towards the red zone.

The Rothmans celebrations became a central drawcard for the event, and the organisers anticipated the biggest crowd ever to attend the RallyDay show as a result.

The weather was kind, as England was enduring a long spell of hot weather. In the week prior to RallyDay, London experienced its hottest day in 95 years with a top of 36.5 Celsius.

Daily temperatures were constantly north of 30 degrees and Londoners were struggling with the heat.

Saturday, July 22 (RallyDay) looked like being a cracker with a predicted top temperature of about 30 degrees.

The day dawned warm and dry, but humid. All of our cars were positioned in our display area on the previous day and we were ready to go. From

early morning, rally enthusiasts poured into the circuit to take up their places, both spectators and enthusiastic participants. By 9am, the roads and narrow English lanes around Castle Combe were bumper to bumper with classic cars.

The Castle Combe circuit and park soon filled with many fantastic rally cars, or cars that became the basis for rally cars.

Imagine seeing 20, yes 20, Lancia Stratos parked in one row in one place at one time. How about 50 Lancia Delta Integrales? Or how about Audi Quattros? I lost count.

Talbot Sunbeams, Metro 6R4s, various Celicas, RS Escorts, RS200s, Focus RS’, Sierras, WRC Lancers and Focus’, Datsun 240RS’, Renault Alpines … the collection of desirable and classic rally and road cars stretched as far as one could see in every direction.

A feature of the day was having Ari Vatanen and David Richards as our

guests in our marquee. From the moment Ari arrived he was surrounded by people wanting his autograph.

From 11am until 7pm, the smile never left Ari’s face.

He spent most of the day signing everything from race helmets to cars and pictures. He gave himself fully to everyone. An absolute gentleman.

David Richards arrived at the circuit by helicopter mid-morning to spend as much time with us as he could. He had to attend a wedding in the afternoon so he kept his helicopter at the ready (certainly beats having to wrestle the London traffic!). ne of many highlights was a parade lap of our Rothmans cars behind Ari and David doing a lap of honour in VLE756X. After a couple of laps of the circuit, Ari commented that he must have been a better driver 25 years ago, because the Escort seemed to be “very difficult to drive now”.

Another highlight of the day was Ford WRC driver, Mikko Hirvonen, who ran his WRC Focus on many fast laps during the day with corporate guests in the navigator’s seat. He was fast and had the thing dialled up at supersonic tarmac attack mode.

And what can you say about seeing the 700 horsepower short wheelbase Audi Quattro Sport Evolutions doing the business? Nothing … you just have to see it.

More than 10,000 people turned up on the day, far exceeding previous attendance records. The rally stars that were present all agreed that RallyDay had a certain future, and accordingly the status of the event, has increased every year since.

And so our small group of Rothmans Escort owners has continued to work together in the years since RallyDay. Most of the Rothmans cars are used in historic rally events or at many of the motoring festivals in Britain during the year.

We continued the collaboration with David Sutton and as a direct result of our RallyDay enthusiasm, he built a new Escort RS for Ari and David to run in the Roger Clark Memorial Rally the following year – resplendent in Rothmans livery and registration plates!

In more recent years, I have been privileged to run the forest rally stage in a Rothmans Escort at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. This massive event is a motoring enthusiast’s dream.

I was thrilled to be a participant and have now been a number of times. It has been a dream journey to be involved in this, and a growing list of events that have come to fruition purely because I decided to build a replica Rothmans Escort many years ago. And whilst the pain of the expense has long subsided, the joy of the friendships I have made over the journey, and the events that I have been able to participate in, continues to cause me to pinch myself.

The interest in historic rallying has grown in the UK and there are any number of days or events where owners can stretch the legs of these great automotive marvels.

The “Slowly Sideways” Club has also evolved over this period and provides a focal point for the owners, who regularly run in great events like The Eifel Rally in Germany, where Group B cars can be seen ‘in the wild’.

If you are a rally fan, then you must add RallyDay and the Goodwood Festival of Speed to the ‘bucket list’ of those things you must do before you depart the final time control.

At martinitours.com.au we would be delighted to host your adventure.

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HOLMES COLUMN

THE MAGIC OF FRENCH RALLYING HOLMES

Story & Photos: MARTIN HOLMES

INSIDE LINE

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n early April the world championship took us to France, the land where motorsport in its various forms began.

Paris-Rouen, in 1894, is respected as the world’s first motor race, the French Grand Prix at Le Mans in 1906 was the first “F1” race, Monte Carlo Rally in 1911 is acknowledged as the first rally, Monte Carlo 1973 – the first world championship rally.

Motorsport history is all over France, which makes the Tour de Corse, France’s WRC event, a much anticipated event, not the least as this epitomises the classical asphalt event in the series.

France has been spoiled for choice when it comes to rallying, for the wide selection of available territory on account of the legal opportunity to close public roads for sport. For many years one of the most dramatic events was the Coupe des Alpes, with a seemingly endless route up and down the French and Italian mountain passes, some of them going well into areas which are blocked by snow for most of the year.

Sadly that event had to stop, as France’s roads became increasingly grid-locked in the limited time when the most dramatic roads were not closed. And gradually as championship rallying moved on from long distance endurance to high-speed performance, the relatively young Tour de Corse (first run in 1956) became internationally popular and represented France when the WRC series was introduced in 1973.

As the sport moved on, so did global

Keith Ballisat’s Triumph TR3A at the 1958 Coupe des Alpes.

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Chris Sclater (far left) and Martin Holmes (far right) were third on the 1978 Tour de France.

economics. The Tour de Corse was threatened when the French federation put out tenders for running their WRC event, and the decision brought Alsace into the sporting limelight, for five years. he arrival of Strasbourg and the Alsace Rally followed the dramatic success of the region’s famous sportsman, Sebastien Loeb.

Awareness of Loeb’s remarkable achievements in the sport did much to help elevate this event to the required international level.

It was held in a very pleasant region in east France and it systematically generated high levels of community involvement. It combined an enjoyable mix of stages in the hills with those in vineyards, but it didn’t offer anything

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unique or geographically special.

Strasbourg was only 200km from Trier, the site of the German world championship rally, which already claims to be the centre of the European continent and whose stages offer a much wider range of conditions.

Alsace was an event that seemed to thrive for the wrong reasons - the (diminishing) Loeb factor. It did not, however, take advantage of the one unique thing which French motorsport has in abundance - heritage.

The WRC event went back to Corsica.

Like so many events of that era, the Bernard Darniche, BMW M1, 1982 Tour de Corse.

1974 winner Jean-Claude Andruet.

“We finished this great event third overall, a satisfying achievement until colleagues asked who actually won. It was Michele Mouton.” exists today.

The winning stage time was over 11 hours! Recce route schedules were dictated by culinary opportunities outlined by the Michelin Guide, every day was spent in a different part of the splendid country, competing on legendary stages, with always the chance for something quite unexpected. erhaps the greatest memory for my driver Chris Sclater and myself in our Vauxhall Chevette

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2300HS was overtaking Bernard Darniche at night at Burzet, when the lights on his Lancia Stratos failed, and he then tucked in behind our car to find his way to the end of the stage. We only knew this because of the strange sound that suddenly came from the rear of our car!

We finished this great event third overall, a satisfying achievement for our little privately-run team, until colleagues asked who actually won. It was Michele Mouton.

“Isn’t that a lady driver…?” That was the end of our little boast. It was still a fabulous way to spend a couple of weeks.

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he Tour de Corse was originally a sprint, effectively a 24-hour event with just a two-hour break around 2.00am. What a race that was!

I only did it once, in ’77, but will never forget those special hours before we retired during the night.

On the section where we retired, we

Coupe des Alpes would have been difficult to see much of without being a competitor. It was more of a personal challenge for the crews.

Another massive event was the Tour de France Automobile which combined races and stages and gave plenty of opportunities to watch some of the most spectacular GT and sports cars driven on the public roads around the country.

I had the joy of competing on this event in 1978 while it was a six-day event, limited to rally car rules and was a qualifying event in the European Championship. A rally like no other

The start of the 1974 Tour de Corse in Bastia.

A mountain-top control on the 1967 Tulip Rally.

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HOLMES COLUMN had already been flat-out for an hour Jean-Claude Andruet was and a quarter. We second in 1982 in this Ferrari 308GTB. had passed at top speed through the village of Ghisoni, where the teams had set up service points and where Fiat had “splash-and-go” refuelling. Those were the days.

And when the rally became a May-time daylight fixture, it was lengthened into a three-day rally, enhancing its allure with overnight halts in different towns around the island.

The island was no longer foggy with stages proliferated by wild boars eating the famously crushed chestnuts on the road.

In May it was now close to the end of a stage. The cafe splendid, spring time went suddenly quiet. Grown men glorious. In 2017 the rally was in April rose up, not to greet us, but to edge once again! backwards towards the door and leave. orsica has its secret side from Rally teams found business with which people arriving for the certain Corsicans dramatic. The word WRC rally are protected. We “hurt” in Corsica is a euphemism for always found the island peaceful and what happens if agreements go wrong. well run, but at other times there are One particular rally driver mysteriously strikes and notices in the newspapers died in an explosion, and nobody said announcing sudden unexplained why. deaths.

Others go into hiding. It is a place One day my driver, Russell Brookes, where you did not dare let people and I stopped during recce for a cup of down. The first time I went to Corsica, coffee in a café in the village of Palneca, in the old exchange-control, pre-credit

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Didier Auriol drove his Lancia Delta Integrale to victory in 1989.

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card days, I did not have enough money to pay the hotel. “Get your bank to send us the money when you get home.

You won’t let us down, we know you will have to come back here again,” was the reply.

A wonderfully warming sentiment, until you thought about it more deeply… ver since the event started in 1956 the Tour de Corse has attracted an impressive variety of cars. It is like the exhausts of some of the most exciting ever rally cars are still reverberating round the hills.

If I ever have one lasting sadness, it is that I did not attend the event in 1972. It was the final major continental event before the world championship arrived, which brought with it the rule banning the impressive Group 5 cars.

The entry list showed Sandro Munari in the prototype Stratos, Jean-Francois Piot and Jean Ragnotti in Ligier JS2s, Bernard Fiorentino in an open roofed Simca CG Spider, Guy Chasseuil in a Ford GT70, Henri Greder in an Opel GT, with some surprises like Jean Todt (the current FIA President) co-driving a little Peugeot 304, and Thierry Sabine, the founder of ’Dakar’, driving a private Porsche.

Only a few years earlier an AC Cobra was competing, some years later a Ferrari finished second and a BMW M1 had been lying fourth.

The Tour de Corse is the spiritual home of French rallying.

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RETRO: THE BP RALLY

DEVIOUS DONALD ....

Story: JEFF WHITTEN

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onald Kingsley Thomson (aka DKT) was the man responsible for the formation of CAMS in the 1950s.

Thomson quickly gained a reputation for being single-minded and a man who enjoyed setting challenges, particularly where car trials were concerned. Being a keen navigator and event organiser, he obtained sponsorship from oil giant BP and began directing the legendary BP Rally, a fearsome navigational event that was unequalled anywhere else in the world.

Each event was more challenging and devious than the last, but competitors kept coming back for more.

At the conclusion of the 1961 BP Rally, the 50-odd competitors who had been exhausted, confused, disheartened, totally broken in spirit and generally lead up the garden path by way of the route instructions devised by the director, fronted Thomson and demanded that he never use unmapped roads in the event again.

Now Donald Thomson, better known then as the National Secretary of CAMS, was a devious fellow, but he agreed to the demands of the competitors.

“If you want mapped roads and mapped roads only, then you shall have them,” he told the relieved crews.

As a result, the 1962 BP Rally, directed

by Thomson of course, was run entirely on mapped roads except where it was absolutely necessary to use unmapped roads, using instructions so simple that even a child could follow them.

Thomson scoured Victoria for mapped roads which, although shown clearly on the Broadbent’s maps, had fallen into such disuse in many cases that forests had grown over them, or which were surrounded by a maze of unmapped tracks.

Indeed in some cases these unmapped “roads” were in better condition than the mapped ones, so that it was impossible to distinguish right from wrong.

These, together with a couple of other tricks Thomson had up his sleeve, ensured that the 1962 BP Rally of South Eastern Australia was a nightmare event that many competitors would not forget in a hurry.

The July 1962 issue of Australian

“The 50-odd crews had been exhausted, confused, disheartened, totally broken in spirit and generally lead up the garden path.”

Motor Sports and Automobiles contained a post-event report on the event, which described the event in

graphic detail, showing that Thomson’s level of navigational debauchery knew no bounds.

Twenty four cars left Melbourne’s Light Car Club on Wednesday May 2nd for the epic 2000 mile (3200km) four day journey through some of the state’s most picturesque country.

Two more cars started from Goulburn NSW, three from Adelaide, four from Mt Gambier and three from Tasmania. The following Sunday, 23 out of the original 35 starters, some much the worse for wear, limped into the finish at Melbourne’s Chadstone shopping centre.

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RETRO: THE BP RALLY Echuca and travelled over three fairly easy sections to the start of the trial proper at Bendigo.

The first of the trial’s seven sections took competitors through little settlements, which in the time of the gold rush 100 years ago, were thriving towns and therefore had a maze of roads, some mapped, some unmapped, running in all directions.

After passing through the quaintlynamed Korweinguboora, the first trap appeared at the settlement of Barkstead. The instructions told competitors to follow a mapped road through to a major control where it joined another main road.

But the mapped road bore no resemblance to the road found, and to make matters worse, the road had been re-routed by the Forests Commission. he new road ran parallel to the old one, crossed it occasionally and finally joined it, but there were three passage controls situated where it was most likely that competitors would blunder in on the wrong road. This was just a taste of what was to come.

Then, at 5.30 on Thursday morning after crews had been on the road for 18 hours straight, they were routed into a maze of obscure tracks around the long-deserted settlement of Longlea. All crews had to do was to follow the mapped road.

Kevin Lott, the winner of the 1960 BP, who had been leading the field in his Ford Anglia at that point, followed what he thought was the right track, and came out into a clearing about 20 feet across. There was no way out from the clearing and after turning around he could not even see where he came in.

So he sat there in a seemingly impenetrable wall of bush, listening to cars revving up and down lanes for about half a mile in all directions. He eventually extricated himself, but not before losing a swag of points.

All the while the lead seesawed so rapidly that nobody could say who was in front at any stage.

Most consistent were Harry Firth and Frank Kilfoyle (Ford Anglia 105E), the eventual winners who had held third place for most of the event.

The trial was taking its toll of cars, and fewer and fewer were turning up at each successive control. Some became irretrievably lost and ran out of time, others suffered suspension and body damage on the rough tracks.

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Competitors R. Lilley and R. Tremain finished up in hospital after their Peugeot collided head-on with a noncompetitor.

At Springhurst, another gold mining area, a further maze presented itself.

By this stage navigators had worked

out that although the official Broadbent’s map had missed on many of the roads, the Army Survey maps, which were permissible to be carried, had not.

But they did not realise that Thomson had worked this out too. The road he

chose for this section was reasonably easy to follow if the official map was followed, but the Army map was wrong and left out the one road that led to control. f all the experienced competitors only one car, a Sunbeam Rapier driven by K. Pawson from Tasmania, reached control.

To amuse crews and further unsettle the already exhausted navigators, Thomson sent them over a precipitous hill for no other reason except, as he noted in the route instructions, “The view from here is fabulous, but fishing is not allowed”. Nobody had time to look at the view, and even if they had time for fishing, there was no water for miles around.

By Saturday afternoon the remaining cars were sent on a reasonably easy section along the Omeo Highway in the Victorian Alps. Times on this section were so easy that some drivers stopped off at Omeo to patronise the local milk bar – but they were soon to regret it.

As they reached the top of the Alps night was falling, and although there was no snow, there was a thick fog to greet them. For 20 miles progress was reduced to the speed that the navigator could manage when walking in front of the car and holding a torch.

Eventually they reached the township of Bright, suffering close to exhaustion.

Some had hair-raising tales to tell about being passed on the outside of the mountain by other competitors,

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while negotiating roads that fell away into seemingly bottomless precipices.

Eventually the remaining stragglers made their way to Melbourne and the finish, where more than 10,000 people were waiting at Chadstone.

There was a quick tie-breaking test, post-event scrutineering and a more-than-welcome cup of coffee waiting.

The event was over for another year. Thomson had kept his promise concerning using mapped roads only, but those who completed the event soon realised that there was more than one way of killing a cat – in this case battling against one of the

greatest minds in the business, Donald Thomson.

For the winners, Harry Firth and Frank Kilfoyle, it was their second win in this around-Victoria marathon, despite this being their first event together.

Interestingly, there were five Ford Motor Company entries in the event – three Anglia 105Es and a pair of Falcons in the top 10, with a Hillman, a Vanguard and a couple of Volkswagens filling the remaining spots.

Thomson’s reputation as a master tactician had been preserved. No doubt he was already poring over the maps for an even more diabolic route for 1963.

GEAR UP IN CONFIDENCE WITH SUBARU Subaru Australia is responding to the needs of the local motorsport community with the launch of the Subaru Motorsport Network (SMN).

Selected Subaru dealerships form part of the SMN, based on their high level of expertise in motorsport, to deliver high performance, quality facilities and maintain exceptional quality control.

SMN ensures that motorsport enthusiasts can purchase genuine motorsport parts with confidence and run their vehicle at the highest performance.

All Subaru genuine motorsport parts are motorsport compliant and graded as high quality, high durability and high reliability.

The network expansion is another key pillar of the company’s overarching Subaru ‘do’ initiatives.

Subaru helps motorsport

Subaru Motorsport parts are available from Maximum Motorsport and Neil Buckby Motors.

enthusiasts including teams, owners and privateers achieve their goals by providing them with a local trusted supplier to maintain their performance edge.

Subaru Australia Managing Director, Colin Christie, said: “We recognise that motorsport enthusiasts rely heavily on the aftermarket segment to source their parts.

“This is an opportunity for Subaru

‘do’ to bring convenience to this community and supply them with genuine, quality motorsport parts.

The benefits lie within the SMN motorsport professionals delivering performance and reliability on every car.”

SMN dealerships currently include Maximum Motorsport, Kewdale, Western Australia and Neil Buckby Motors, Launceston, Tasmania.

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RETRO: TOYOTA’S DARKEST HOUR

TURBOGATE

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oyota have had a glorious return to the World Rally Championship, with Jari-Matti Latvala finishing second at Monte Carlo and then winning in Sweden.

The early successes of 2017 are a far cry from 1995, however, when the factory Toyota team were caught cheating. It was, without doubt, the company’s darkest hour in motorsport.

Martin Holmes’ annual World Rallying book from 1995 explains how it all happened. ~~~~~ t an extraordinary World Motor Sport Council meeting on November 3, Toyota Team Europe was excluded from the 1995 World Rally Championship and suspended from competition for 12 months.

This came as a result of competing in Catalunya with a turbo restrictor that failed the scrutineer’s inspection on three counts: 1. The restrictor was not sealed so it was possible to move it without touching the seals; 2. It was possible for air to enter the engine without passing the restrictor, and; 3. The position of the restrictor could be moved so it was further away from the turbine than the 50mm limit permitted.

FIA President, Max Mosley, said Toyota’s air inlet system was “The most sophisticated and ingenious device I have ever seen in 30 years of motorsport, or indeed had any other member of the World Council, scrutineers or technical experts.

“The marvel of the system was that it was completely concealed under a hose which encased the restrictor and joined the turbocharger body with the air filter. When the system was dismantled there was no way of telling anything irregular had existed.”

Mosley said the system was put into operation when the restrictor was assembled. As the restrictor was attached to the turbocharger body it was covered by an all-encasing hose.

This hose was then tightened with three jubilee clips. One of these required a special tool to operate it, because it was used to pull the restrictor outwards from its casing.

This movement not only served to aid the airflow into the turbine blades, but more importantly, opened up a 5mm

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gap through which extra air could enter the engine on the engine-side of the legal constriction.

The final clip then clamped the restrictor in its new position with claws.

When the restrictor was dismantled the three clips had to be undone.

When the central clip was loosened, the claws released their grip on the restrictor, which then regained its original and legal position.

The spring against which the restrictor was tightly held was a flange, which appeared at first glance to be a closely fitting device aimed at locating the restrictor in an air-tight attachment to its casing.

It served, in fact, as a diaphragm spring. It allowed the restrictor to move outwards by 5mm, leaving a 5mm ring between the restrictor and its casing, through which the extra air could pass.

Mosley emphasised that the body in front of the World Council was the team.

“The Toyota Motor Company itself was at no stage invited to appear before the World Council because there was no reason to suppose they were in any way aware of what was going on.”

The ban as applied to Toyota Team Europe would have no effect on the Toyota Motor Company, but if Toyota Team Europe appeared in another guise, it was unlikely the FIA would accept such an entry during the period of suspension.

“The drivers are unfortunately also automatically excluded when a car is excluded because of illegality. There is, however, nothing to suggest that the drivers were aware of what was going on,” Mosley said.

- MARTIN HOLMES FIA President, Max Mosley, inspects the illegal turbo restrictor in Paris in November 1995.

(Photo: Holmes)

ABOVE: The official diagram released by the FIA shows just how clever TTE’s devious design was, while (below) the Catalunya Rally Stewards’ decision explains why the factory Celicas were excluded from the 1995 rally.

The TTE pairing of Didier Auriol and Denis Giraudet prior to the team’s exclusion in Spain in 1995. (Photos: Holmes)

TTE Technical Director, Dieter Bulling, was the first head on the chopping block.

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PHOTO OF THE MONTH

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Former New Zealand Rally Champion Brian Stokes pushes his Escort hard on the McIntosh Road stage of the Otago Rally.

(Photo: Peter Whitten)

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REARVIEW Simon Evans and Ben Searcy made their Otago Rally debut in Darryn Snooks' Datsun Stanza, setting some impressive stage times.

(Photo: Peter Whitten)

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