Not my usual picture thread as, to be honest, it doesn’t actually have that many pictures in it! Last month the missus and I went to Italy for a holiday around the Rally Legend weekend. It was an amazing event but, as it was supposed to be a holiday for two us, I elected not to go mad with the camera and try and see as much as possible. Consequently I have utilized a few videos from You Tube to illustrate some points in this post!
On the way to San Marino we made a couple of stops, including Ducati and the Pagani museum/factory. The museum only consists of a handful of cars…
…but the factory tour was
very impressive. The entire facility is built to resemble an Italian courtyard and it looks more like a studio for photographing cars than building them. Sadly you aren’t allowed any cameras in there, so you’ll have to take my word that it was good!
The opening ceremony for Rally Legend takes place on the Thursday night. The Rally HQ is an athletic stadium and the teams set up at the roadside and side streets in the immediate vicinity. As the cars leave the start ramp in the stadium they exit onto a large roundabout. Some drivers were well behaved… most were not!
The rally started on Friday morning with a short shakedown stage. We managed to find a spot on the hillside right by the stage, so I snapped a few cars coming though…
…there were cars present from every era of rallying, but it was the number of Corolla and Peugeot 206 WRCars that surprised me most: I can’t recall ever seeing more than one or two in the UK and there were about 15 entered!
Although there wasn’t an example of every shape, there were several Group A and WRCar Imprezas entered. This white S12B was the latest car and it was absolutely flying.
After a few hours of shakedown it was back to the rally paddock for a couple of beers and a look around.
The first competitive stages took place on the Friday evening in San Marino old town. It was quite a walk up to the summit, but well worth it: watching rally cars run through San Marino town at night is probably the most spectacular environment I have ever seen rallying in.
We then went back to the morning shakedown stage which, by this point, was absolute carnage. There were bonfires up the hillsides and fireworks going off over/into the stage. It was about 1AM when the last car ran through, so we headed back to the hotel.
Saturday moved to a different set of stages. We were told there was a big jump a short walk into SS6, so we got to that before the first car came through. The crowd was pretty big here and, as I was with the missus, I didn’t fight to the front to take pictures, so we sat quite a way back.
As we started to move back down the stage we stopped at this crest. A lot of the front runners had been getting big air over the jump, but backing off at this spot. Many of the latter cars seemed to be carrying more speed over here and a couple of them had some pretty big moments.
Of the 100+ entrants there wasn’t a boring car among them and, from the first to the last, all the drivers seemed to be determined to put a good show on.
Saturday finished with a night stage in an industrial estate in the corner of San Marino. I often think that these sorts of stages can be pretty gimmicky, but the Italian version was quality (imagine the track from Death Race, but with rally cars on it). As with the previous night stage there were flares and fireworks going off everywhere. Like so many things we saw over the course of the weekend, it seems that the same level of health and safety we have in the UK has not arrived here yet!
The rally concluded with a day of action on the industrial estate area on the Sunday. Again we positioned ourselves to see as much as we could rather than for taking pictures, but I did get a couple of snaps from the inside of one of the corners as we were moving around.
The biggest feature on the Sunday was the “Champions for a Champion” Colin McRae parade: Munari, Alen, Rohrl, Vatanen, Mikkola, Blomqvist, Salonen, Kankkunen, Biasion, Auriol, Makinen, Gronholm, Solberg and Ogier were all there, with many of them driving their title winning cars.
Pretty incredible to see all these guys together and something that is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
The day after the rally the tour organiser had arranged a short road trip to K Sport: K Sport are based just outside San Marino and were responsible for running the vast majority of Lancia’s entered in the event. The workshop was a pretty impressive sight but the most incredible bit was the “office” upstairs.
At the end of line of immaculate Integrales was an 037, a Stratos and a Delta S4…
…with another S4 sitting beside it. The whole collection was absolutely jaw-dropping. I believe the Delta S4 on the right is now for sale, so if any of you happened to win the lottery last weekend, then get on the phone to K Sport!
We stopped off at Lamborghini and Ferrari on the return leg but, after seeing so many rare rally cars under one roof at k Sport, a showroom full of supercars was rather underwhelming!
The weekend was, by quite a significant margin, the most expensive motorsport excursion I’ve made, but I can’t recommend it enough. Like the rallycross events I have been to in Europe, the fans in Italy are absolutely bonkers and there is a
lot more freedom for spectators.