Driving Stage ZR14: Rallye Monte Carlo Historique 2013

Want to know what driving a full historic rally regularity stage is like...? Here's a dashcam view of most of the ZR14 stage (Utelle to La Tour sur Tinee). It's a straight run (no junctions) on the D32 -an improbably narrow, winding, goat trail of road, with an appalling surface and strewn with large rocks that have fallen from the mountainside. To make matters worse there's no guard rail and the drop off the side is one of those "your clothes will go out of fashion before you hit the bottom" deals. A few things to remember (i) the camera lens is very wide angle so in reality the road is much narrower than it appears in this clip ad (ii) we are not racing but driving as a time-speed-distance regularity; that is to say we are trying to maintain a precise average speed (in this case I believe it was 47.7 KPH) and (iii) the cars we overtake are running below the average speed (an indication of the stage's difficulty)and we have caught them up. As you can see, at least one car, a large Mercedes, has gone off into the rock wall and bizarrely we encounter a broken down camper van. The RMCH is definitely not a wine and cheese party. And don't you love the way the Mini just flies by those Porsches...!

The team would like to say a big "thank you" to Justin Jeffrey at Mini Spares UK for generous sponsorship as well as participating as a member of our service team.

Sound Byte

In case any of you gentle readers happened to to be curious about what it sounds like to be inside a Mini Cooper S prepared for historic rallying, try dropping a fork down your sink waste disposal unit, mic up to a decent sized PA system and turn on. The decibel meter on my iPad registered 90dB at 4000 rpm. I didn't try on a stage (no time) when the revs were pushing 8000rpm. The use of an intercom with good noise cancelling headphones is highly recommended. And before you ask, this short clip was taken on a transit road section between stages and we weren't speeding. Honestly!

Shedding Some Light on the Matter: An Illuminating Evolution

When I first started rallying at the beginning of the new millennium, the Mini was fitted with two, period correct, 7" Lucas Flamethrower spotlights. These very quickly revealed themselves to be little better then useless when the going got tough and the term "candlepower" was never more apt. Subsequently I added two more Lucas 5 1/2" fog lights which also proved to be minimally effective. I then had the Flamethrowers (an optimistic term if ever there was one) rebuilt with modern reflectors and high output bulbs. In addition the Mini's headlights were replaced with quartz iodine units. This was a small improvement but we still weren't getting anywhere near enough light on the road, especially with Bill's (who was now in the pilot's seat) aggressive driving style on twisty mountain stages. So then we added a set of four classic 180cm Cibié Oscars. This was a lot better and night stages were becoming less scary. But the lighting evolution continued and for the subsequent rally we substituted the two center lamps for 220cm Super Oscars. Now I was beginning to feel that we were no longer outgunned by some of our competitors who seemed to have military-grade anti-aircraft searchlights bolted to their vehicles. But there is an old saying about the Monte, "You can never have enough light on the road". Too true! So for the 2013 event we have four 220cm Super Oscar spotlights with long distance beams and two 180cm Oscars with foglight reflectors to give us side scatter illumination which is particularly useful for 180° hairpins turns. Oddly we have never found a light which is any use in fog; maybe one year we'll fit radar for that...!

That Time of Year Again

Well it appears to be that time of year again when we engage in ritual combat with Porsches, Alfa Romeos, Jaguars and other automotive iron on the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique. It's come around very fast. I'm now madly making pace notes and doing a million things before I fly out to to fettle and calibrate the car next week. This time the "off" is from Monte Carlo on Monday 28th January and finishes at the same place in the early hours of Saturday 2nd February. A good place to spectate is the Quai Albert, MC, at the start of the Turini night loop on the afternoon of Friday 1st February or a little later at the top of the Col de Turini itself. Please come and watch if you are anywhere near the south of France or come and say hello after the finish. I won't bore you with more details now as everything will get published in the motoring press anyway (thanks Jeff)but in the meantime here are a few nice action snaps of the MiniSpares-Mad Dog Rally Team on the 2012 event.

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