Rally report - Winter Challenge a.k.a. the "Historic" Monty

[Peter Pleitner]

Hi Alfa 750/101ers and Whitworth Heads, Just got home from Nice last night. Some of you expressed an interest in my adventure. Well, an Alfa 101 Sprint driven by Jan Ebus with Lester Van der Zalm won overall, and the MGTC driven by Guy Hewett with Lee French (woman) won the pre-war "vintagent" class. That makes me real proud to have an example of both. It was a joy and surprise to observe the MGTC pass a 1964 Corvette Sting Ray on a twisty down-hill section towards Lac du Bourget near Aix-les-Bains. Naturally we never saw the Dutch team in their winning Alfa Sprint, except at the start each day. They didn't even stay in the same hotels, claiming they didn't want to be seen with their maps! Hummmm. Unfortunately our Saab's 2-cycle engine ceased up on the last day before the all night section (probably a piston). I think this happened after one too many hard hill climb regularity stages into thin air, after we changed to slightly leaner jets in the carburetors. We had to install a lower spec engine on Saturday because our first engine's roller bearing crank ceased on our way to our last minute rescheduled start from Brooklands, England on Sunday (this because our Saab was on the wrong ship, found in Liverpool!). We changed over to slightly leaner jets as recommended on the carbs on Tuesday night in Aix-les-Bains, France. We were trying for better performance and lower fuel consumption after repeatedly visiting cols (passes) at 1700 meter altitude - probably a fatal mistake. Anyway I got to the finish in Nice by train and rental car about 9 hours before the first competitors. Almost all regularity stages favored high torque engines. Navigating was a real challenge, far too tricky for this novice, especially considering we couldn't keep our speedometer cable engaged, hence odometers and Halda Speed Pilot were mostly inoperative. Also we were forced to skip a control around lunch time on two consecutive days because the French close their gas stations for one or two hours for lunch! If I were to get serious about this level of competition I would certainly know how to go about preparing for it next time. I am totally astounded at how many tiny roads we navigated, hustling our Saab 96 through small villages praying we wouldn't hit an old man or woman setting foot outside their front door, or run into the mail man, or encounter on-coming traffic on roads barely wide enough for one small car, roads going up or down that often looked on my maps like the intestines of a very small bird. I must report that the chassis dynamics and braking performance of our Saab was way above and beyond my expectations. Wednesday evening, a few hours after we left our Saab at a dealer back in Chambrey we received reports of very bad snow on ice conditions around Gap, and the very distressing news that last year's #2 finishers, Frank Fennell with Kevin Savage, had a head-on collision in his Volvo P544 with a local family while he was apexing the inside of a blind corner. He broke both legs and sustained other serious injuries. A helicopter took him to hospital. Shortly thereafter, near a control, about a half dozen of our competitors slid into each other at slow speed near a control. When the sweep vehicle got tangled up in this mess the entire trailing field of competitors were stuck. It was so slippery a course marshal on foot, trying to steady himself on the Sunbeam Talbot, caused the Talbot to slide sideways off the road and tumble down a slope! A conservative guess is that about 15% of the competitors didn't make it to the finish with their cars, yours truly among them. It was a profitable week for the transporters indeed. Possible our ceased engine saved us from a more serious mishap. Early Friday morning in Cannes I set off to find the first stage of the World Rally Championship's first stage. When I finally reached the mountains north of Cannes, about 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow blanketed everything - real picturesque, and the snow plows left little if any room for on coming traffic. With the help of our Chief of the Course the previous night, I was lucky to find the race and photograph some of the competitors driving their modern rally cars to the start of the first stage. Reaching this point was very risky because the conditions were difficult even for this snow experienced driver, and there were quite a few fans trying to get to the first section of the day too, many obviously inexperienced in snow, yet driving high performance hatchbacks like Peugeots, Fords, and Subaru's. Wow, are those Subaru RSXs ever Fast!!! I passed one high performance Audi wagon (shooting brake?) wearing a concrete lap post where the engine usually resides! I barely made it back to the awards ceremony in time to learn that the organizers, not only stressed by the weather induced accidents, and impromptu stage changes requiring the redesignation of some time controls to passage control after the fact (much to the consternation of some competitors), were missing their shipment of seventy silver cups and trophies due to the snow and ice conditions in transit! There, that's my report, already too long, but much left unsaid between the lines. Cheers, Peter PS: Special thanks to Peter Yaxley and Michael Card for providing an early "heads-up". I very much enjoyed seeing them at Brooklands, and the lodging provided by Michael.

[Peter Pleitner]

Correction, The finish was in Cannes, not Nice. Its past my Greenwich bed time, reliving the rally was exhausting, and my brain is fading fast. Cheers, Peter

[Emgeeguy@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/21/01 6:53:24 PM Central Standard Time, pleitner@dundee.net writes:

that's my report, already too long

Not too long, indeed ! Sounds like fun! Larry Long

[Harry Pyle]

Peter, Wow !!! what a great experience...and a brilliant article. Many thanks for sharing with us. Regards Harry

----- Original Message ----- From: Peter Pleitner pleitner@dundee.net> To: T-ABCs List mg-tabc@egroups.com>; alfa750-101group alfaromeo750-101@egroups.com> Sent: Monday, January 22, 2001 8:59 AM Subject: [mg-tabc] Rally report - Winter Challenge a.k.a. the "Historic" Monty > Correction, > > The finish was in Cannes, not Nice. Its past my Greenwich bed time, > reliving the rally was exhausting, and my brain is fading fast. > > Cheers, Peter > > > >