At the top of a narrow icy mountain road, an elderly Austrian woman rolled down her window and berated me for all the historic rally cars that had blocked her way home: “I have now met 5 or 6 and each one expects me to reverse – they just blow their horns and look impatient” she said, furiously. “How many more should I expect now I’m at the summit?”“Er, about 90…” came my unwelcome reply, as she scowled back at me, “… but I do like your nice old VW Golf TDi; is it the 4-wheel drive model that we never had in the UK?” Her look softened slightly, “Certainly, why?” “Well, I would like to buy it if you ever choose to sell.” Surprise. A slight smile. “You’ll have to wait till April, and come out to my house to collect it”. I rallied, stammering “No problem, so sorry about all these rally cars in your way, please go now while there’s a gap.” And off she went with my details and a smile on her face. Potential octogenarian fisticuffs averted.
I had been driving renowned rally photographer Mike Johnson on The Winter Trial, an international event from Holland to Slovenia and Italy, capturing images for motoring magazines and sponsors. WT runs annually in the last week of January, and aims to recall the spirit of famous events such as the Monte Carlo rally. This year, the route took us from Maastricht to Trieste, Italy, via the Alps and Slovenian mountain passes in 6 days, with 2 night sections.
Classic rallying is often confused with racing, but is entirely different. It consists of a long journey with precise timing and 3 distinct parts. Tests are held on airfields, kart tracks and driving centres, with fast times required. Regularity sections are on small country roads, often very remote, and require precise timing but not very high speed. Transport sections link the first 2 together, and should give no penalty unless an incident occurs. The one with the least penalties at the finish wins (this feels a bit like explaining the offside rule in football!).
With the rally we visited some wonderful places: the iconic renaissance Predjama Castle near Postojna in Slovenia was finished in 1570 and is seemingly carved out of a rock face; it is connected to a huge natural cave system for emergency supplies in case of siege. The historic port city of Trieste made a marvellous finish location on the quayside, overlooked by the main piazza and many fine old buildings. This rally made use of various test tracks, especially an ice-driving course at Altenmarkt that mimics the Oesterreichring F1 circuit. Built every winter in a farmer’s field from ploughed snow and sprayed with a fire hose to create an extremely slippery surface, the circuit is a lot of fun to drive… especially in the pitch dark, as we discovered on this particular visit!
There was lots of chequered-flag waving and champagne-spraying at the finish, after a long and tough week on the road. The event was eventually won by Gijs Van Lennep (ex- Le Mans driver) and Ian Tullie (prize-winning navigator) in Car #1, a Porsche 356. The finishing party was a mixed affair – for a start, the weather conditions were bad enough that strange formations of sea ice appeared on bollards and harbour walls, yachts were torn from their mooring ropes and one of our marshals was blown off his feet as he attempted to cross a busy street. An unusual combination of a Beatles tribute band and a (frankly questionable) all female electro-string trio accompanying the prize-giving at the closing party ended what had been a dramatic but thoroughly enjoyable week. Early next morning Mike and I set off 1,100 miles for home.
No problems across Europe until arriving in Dover in the early hours, where we were rather surprised to be greeted by deep snow on the deck and on the dock. This being Britain, the snow had caused chaos. All the roads out of town were blocked by stationary traffic, but luckily we managed to find a devious back route and crawl our way out, snow scraping the bottom of the car, eventually making it home by dawn.Classic rallying is a brilliant sport; it brings together elements of driving skill, observation and endurance, while giving us participants an insight into the nature, history and lifestyle of countries we may not otherwise know or understand. I’m fortunate indeed to be invited to share in this and would highly recommend it.
Jonathan Pelly-Fry
February 2012
www.thetrial.nl
Classic Events, international rally organisers
Visit our Facebook page for more images of the event!