(THE REAL THING) - Part 2
We pick up the story at Vals les Bains, after the exhausting first leg -
two legs really, the Concentration Leg and the Classification Leg. Our
wrong slot on the last regularity of the previous day meant that we would
be starting 154 for the rest of the event.
I was looking forward to the first regularity of the day, as it included
an 8 mile gravel forest road. Strange thing about France. They don't seem
to do much, if any, forest rallying, yet they have enormous forests full of
gravel roads! Still, chacun à son goût, as they say in those parts.
How the other half live (1). Our hotel was in the next town, Aubenas, so
the hotel keeper offered to take us in his car to parc ferme in Vals. We
shared the car with a German couple. Naturally the talk got round to what
cars we were competing in. They were a Porsche. At the mention of our Mini
Cooper the husband said "Oh, I have just bought a new Mini Cooper". "Yes",
says the wife, " he drives it all the time now. The poor Jaguar is quite
lonely sitting in the garage all day". The discussion moves on to the
problems of finding people to restore Mini Coopers. "Yes", says the wife,
"but I think the man who is restoring my MGB could manage a Mini".
Fortunately we arrived at parc ferme before we could hear about the rest of
the stable. Still, it was probably only a couple of BMWs and a few Mercs!
There was a long road section to the first regularity, so we had arranged
to meet our service crew near the end of it to change tyres, starting the
day on the Yokohamas we had used the previous day on the long run down
through France and the comparatively low mountains around Burzet. Alas,
that proved to be something of a mistake.
Cruising up the N7 towards Valence, the engine suddenly died away to a
tickover as the throttle cable broke. We pulled into the side and got out.
I looked down at the back of the car and said "Peter, did you know that the
left rear tyre is flat?" He hadn't noticed it, but then you don't,
apparently.
So I change the rear for the only spare while
Peter tackles the throttle cable. We have a cable, but we have no tools -
they are all on the service van 50k's up the road!
Never daunted, Peter finds a long piece of
string in the boot and rings up a hand throttle. It works, although we got
a few strange looks from spectators as we went through various towns and
villages.
I telephoned the service crew to move nearer
to us and we pressed on, onto the Autoroute north of Valence.
Suddenly, as we were overtaking a tanker at
about 85 mph, there was a horrible noise as the right front blew. Somehow,
Peter managed to control the car, complete the overtaking manoeuvre and get
the car onto the hard shoulder. Now we were totally *@?*ed (to use an
expression popular among higher civil servants in the Department of
Transport) as we had only had one spare. All we could do was wait for the
service crew to come all the way back to us and then go on to the previous
junction before turning round and finding us.
By the time they had done this we were OTL for the first regularity, and,
indeed the control would probably have been closed by the time we got
there, so we took the Autoroute around the mountain we had meant to go over
and rejoined the route for the next section, after first having telephone
the Clerk of the Course to tell him of our intention to rejoin, as required
by the regulations. (If you miss a control you are excluded unless you
inform the C of C within an hour of your intention to rejoin).
While we were thus engaged, the rest of the team did quite well on
Regularity 4, with two crews in the top 40. That may not sound great,
but there were still 280 crews in the rally.
We rejoined for Regularity 5 (the 30,000 points we lost for missing the
previous one putting us down in 250+ position), and began the fight back.
Penalties of 9 and 48 points for the 37km test (representing 0.9 seconds at
the intermediate timing point and 4.8 seconds at the finish) were our best
of the event, and placed us 45th on the test, actually beating the great
Willy Cave for the third test out of the four we had completed.
Regularity 6 was 21 kilometres long, and was not quite so good, with 83
penalties representing a total of 8.3 seconds adrift between the two timing
points. That put us 100th on the test out of the 273 still running, and as
on previous events on the flat roads of this country I have always thought
that if our time difference was in single figures we were doing pretty
well, that shows the standard of competitor we were up against - 'cos this
was in the mountains. Willy Cave showed us how to do it by dropping
just 1.0 seconds on the whole test and still only finished third! We were,
in fact, only 1.2 seconds out at the finish, but 7.1 seconds at the
intermediate point.
The final test of the day, into Gap, was not a good one for the team,
with Willy Cave ranking only 47th, and no-one else in the team above 145th.
We finished 185th on 36.1 seconds, the Cooper running out of puff on the
steep twisty hills. You really do need something you can point and squirt
between the hairpins!
At Gap our 30,000 penalty points put us in a fairly dismal 253rd
position, but from there the only way is up, so we set off undaunted after
a good nights rest and a convivial meal with the service crew in the hotel.
During the day the service crew investigated the reasons for the
punctures and discovered that both tyres had been burst by studs dropped by
other competitors on the dry tarmac roads we met on the first day. Quite
what they were doing on studs when there was no snow or ice to be seen is
beyond me, but it seems that we had picked up several of them the day
before and they had gradually worked their way through the tyres and burst
the tubes.
Moving south from Gap, we entered true Monte Carlo Rally country, and
indeed all the Regularity Sections we did from now.
And so finally we came to the last test of the rally, 21kms from
Lantosque to Luceram over the Col de la Porte and Col St. Roch. Steep,
narrow, twisty and bumpy, we were two minutes late at the intermediate
point and three minutes off at the finish for 158th place.
On the four regularities of the mountain circuit we had picked up 6500
penalties, compared to a total of 3500 on the rest of the event, but our
efforts on the last day had moved us up 63 places in the overall
classification - from 253rd at Gap to 190th at the finish of the rally. But
for the problems on the second day I think we would have finished in the
top 100, not a bad effort in a car which simply hasn't got the power to
keep to time up the steepest cols.
So we returned to Monte Carlo getting in at about 4 a.m. to find the bars
still open in the harbour so we enjoyed a few beers with the team
before retiring to the luxury of the Hermitage. Up in time for lunch with
the service crew and some of the team we strolled around during the
afternoon before getting dressed for the Gala Dinner and Prizegiving at the
Sporting Club de Monaco. Black tie it said in the instructions and black
tie they meant, as some who had not taken the instruction seriously were
ejected.
The dinner was out of this world, the wines (white, red and champagne)
plentiful and the minibuses essential.
We decided to walk back to the town where we found the Irish bar and
drank Guinness with our friends from Tralee until about 4 a.m. when we
staggered back to the Hotel and some much needed sleep. We made breakfast
next morning by the skin of our teeth and once the alcohol level had
dropped sufficiently set out on the long road back to Calais, accompanied
by the service truck.
The A.C. de Monaco certainly know how to put on a classy event, and I
can't wait to go back for more.
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