Italia - Corse 2010 Sportscar Challenge

I had been toying with the idea of taking part in a motor endurance rally for quite some time when a call for a navigator appeared on the Guild of Motor Endurance Facebook page. Thinking that it would be a good idea to see what such a rally entailed without having to wreck my car (and very probably myself) in the process, I rang up immediately and said I'd be available. Little did I know that this would mean spending nine days strapped in a tiny metal box with a complete stranger driving along on narrow roads up in the Corsican mountains, where nothing but his skill (and a healthy dose of good luck) would keep us from coming to a very messy end in some forgotten valley. For all I knew, he could have been a speed junkie with the driving skills of a seven year old.

Fortunately he was a speed junkie with the skills of a race-driver.

I met Richard, the driver, in Troyes, and we drove down to Gap together that same day. In Gap we met some of the other competitors who drove fierce-looking cars that made equally fierce-sounding noises. This is when I started to feel a little uncomfortable. How could we ever compete with the likes of five-litre TVRs in our humble little, Smart-engined Europa? Yes that's right - our car was powered by a little engine from a Smart car, harnessing all of 100 timid ponies that hardly whinnied, let alone bellowed as the ones locked up in the TVR, the Honda or the Cosworth-powered Seven did...

We spent the night in Gap and the next day set off for San Remo, where the rally was scheduled to start. We woke up early on Sunday, made some final preparations on the car and the road book, and set off at 8.07 (we were car 7). The first few stages were pretty straightforward: narrow, twisty Ligurian roads - nothing we couldn't handle. Particularly since Richard had a driving licence and I could tell right from left. Easy….not a glitch on the first day, for us at least. Not everyone had such good luck though. Quite a few cars ran into problems, mechanical hitches and navigational oversights. We learnt all this on the ferry to Corsica, where we also found out that we had climbed to position 2! The next day we set off from the ferry port in Bastia, and drove hard and fast for about 10 hours, until we were due in at the hotel.

I had by now accepted that in spite of my misgivings, our little car was an amazing feat of engineering capable of both whizzing along the straights and whipping around the corners ....brilliant!

Day 2 saw some over-enthusiastic driving and a dodgy overtake where we managed to clip two rocks by the side of the road, resulting in two bent rims. We jacked the car up to get the kinks out of the wheels, but with our two hammers inconveniently stowed away in the boot and a mere five minutes to go until our time control, I was asked to find a rock that might do the trick (hopefully). I found one. Richard said it would do, lifted the rock high above his head, took careful aim, and brought it down with all his might. No sound. Not a thunk. And then there was blood. Lots of it. Amazing how much blood can come out of a pinkie. He went white as a sheet and asked me for some duct tape, which I obligingly wrapped around the gaping wound to stem the flow.

We somehow managed to make it in time to the next time control, which was conveniently located next to a tyre-dealer. We got the wheels fixed in about fifteen minutes, which meant that we had to drive twice as fast for the remaining thirty minutes on the next stage.

Day 3 was uneventful, apart from a big mistake on my part which meant that we missed an off-route control (a check point located on a map which is not indicated by signs and distances as are the other time controls on the road-book). This set us back ten points, and it made me feel very silly indeed. In the meantime Richard's finger had grown to the size of a small courgette. Actually, it was the same colour as a courgette too. How it was still attached to his hand is a mystery.

Because of my map-reading booboo on Day 3, we started the following day in position 5. This was actually a good thing, as we could free-ride on other competitors' efforts – and luck (just like they had done on previous days), and see what route they were following.
The day went by almost as quickly as we did, and was uneventful too, except for some close encounters with wild oxen, wild boar and the odd Sunday driver. Worth mentioning perhaps were the wheel rims (the ones on the right-hand side this time) we bent as a result of Richard's exuberance and my less-than-perfect navigation skills. Nothing a huge rock and a big dollop of elbow grease couldn't fix though.

My less-than-perfect navigation skills landed us in trouble again on day 5. Somehow (still not sure exactly how), I managed to navigate us onto roads that had been closed to traffic because of the French National Historic Rally Championship. Eeek!!!! It was good fun to drive through the bouncy castles at the start and finish of the special rally stage that we gate-crashed. It was also good fun to be photographed by bewildered spectators (our car hardly made any noise, unlike the very vocal historic cars that were taking part in that rally). What wasn't good fun was being turned back at the end of it by a very cross marshall. It also wasn't fun in the passenger seat, being slung from side to side while Richard tried to make up for the time I had lost. All I can remember now is feeling a little bit queasy, and then relieved when we finally made it to our time control (on time).

Day 6 dawned and we were in position 5. The big TVR was up in front, a Lotus Elise second, a Westfield and a Caterham in third and fourth, and then us. There were about fifteen competitors behind us, so we weren't too bothered about this, as long as we could hold on to our position. We somehow muddled through the day without mishap, which is more than I can say for the poor guys in the TVR, who were left stranded in the middle of nowhere as a result of a suspension failure.

Because of their misfortune, we climbed to position 4, which we clung onto for dear life until the rally came to an end later on that day. Not too bad for my first rally, I guess. We managed a second in class too (cars with an engine capacity of up to 1600cc), and won the team cup together with the girls in the Caterham!

Two weeks later, it all seems a bit of a blur, just as it was then – not least because of Richard's driving….

Now I just can't wait for the next 350 days to go by.