Stratos versus the RAC

The Lancia Stratos so dominated the World Rally Championship in the mid seventies that it's more interesting to discuss the rallies it didn't win than those it did.

A series of disasters afflicted their three expeditions to the Safari, the rough roads of Greece took their toll year after year and they never bothered to send such a nervous car to the smooth, fast roads of Finland. However the rally that the Stratos really should have won is our own RAC rally.

Fords dominated the event, but I wasn't the only spectator shivering by the side of the stage waiting for the Boreham boxes to pass so we could see - and hear - the exotic Italian supercar. If the Stratos looked out of place in the middle of Africa, it seemed no more at home in a cold, and frequently wet, British forest.

This was a rally the car really should have won at least once. Here's the story of how they failed.

1974

The Stratos was homologated in 1 October 1974 and by the time of the RAC Rally had already won two World Rallies. Sandro Munari brought the car to Britain and with his regular co-driver ill and himself suffering from food poisoning he was content to settle for third behind Timo Makinen's Ford Escort RS1600 and Stig Blomqvists Saab 96 V4.

However he's scored several fastest times on the way and had shown the car's potential. British fans took note.

Autosport journalist Peter Newton wrote of the experience "A deep musical throb among the distant trees, then with a bark of triumph, the Stratos leaps out of the gloom into the sunlight, its driver corrects and the red-and-white projectile hurls itself at the straining watchers on the corner. The sheer speed of its arrival takes everyone by surprise.."

1975

Before....

Lancia now realised they had a car that could take on the world, but expecting Munari to do all the driving was asking a bit too much of him, so they recruited Swedish ace Bjorn Waldegard to help out. Waldegard had made his name in Porsches and was expected to win the tricky northern European rounds, leaving Munari to take the glory on the other events.

Well, that was the plan anyway.

On the 1975 RAC Waldegard was flying in the new Alitalia liveried car. Literally. After 16 stages he had set 6 fastest times and was comfortably in the lead. He then flew too high on a yump in Pickering and broke a drive shaft. Mechanics changed it on the stage (that was legal then) but at a cost of one hour of delay and all of his rear bodywork.

.... and after.

Waldegard continued in the event and continued to set fastest times, but he'd been OTL and was also running without brake lights, rear lights and a rear number plate.

Exclusion was the result and with Munari crashing out it was Lancia nil points.

1976

He should have got his revenge the next year, but it all went wrong in San Remo.

Waldegard had ended the penultimate stage four seconds ahead of Munari. As it wouldn't do for the top Italian rally driver to be beaten on home soil Waldegard was instructed to let his team mate win. Waldegard came to the start of the last stage and was waved away. The car didn't move for four seconds. With everything square he then blasted off at full speed to win the stage, by four seconds.

Lancia were not impressed and sacked him on the spot. Ford signed him immediately and started cobbling a car together for the RAC.

Munari was again the lone Lancia on the rally. He set a few fastest times - including at the New Brighton spectator stage where little me was undergoing my RAC baptism - but mostly he appeared to not want to be there. Indeed the entire team appeared to have a case of the blues.

He eventually finished fourth, just behind Waldegard, who was busy telling the press he'd have won the event in a Stratos.

A second car, run by the British Chequered Flag team and driven by Per Inge Walfridsson  struggled before retiring with electric problems in Yorkshire.

Shortly afterwards the world found out what had caused the long faces in the Lancia camp. Fiat group headquarters had decided that next year the Fiat team in their 131 Abarths was to be given priority in World Championship.

1977

Turin only allowed Lancia to enter four World rounds in '77, but fortunately for us, one was the RAC.

Munari was again the only Stratos man, and again he struggled with the conditions and the secret stages.

At the end of the first day he was fourth, at the end of the second he was fifth and by half way he was ninth. The Stratos's gearbox then jammed in gear, loosing him an hour, but he carried on for the fans and eventually managed 25th, setting a fastest time on the last stage.

1978

This was to be the Stratos's last year as an official rally car, although once again Fiat were given priority in the WRC. Former Fiat man Markku Alen had switched to a Stratos for the San Remo rally, swapping cars with Walter Rohrl who had been campaigning it in Germany. He'd won the rally after the German launched his Fiat off a cliff.

Alen thought the car would be more suitable than the 131 for the RAC and so he and Munari entered their red, white and black Pirelli cars for what was supposed to be the last official outing for a works Stratos.

The press made the most of the occasion and Lancia managed some secret tire testing at Donnington whilst giving motoring journalists a ride in the car.

Thanks perhaps to this Alen stormed into a lead over the Sunday 'Mickey Mouse' stages and prepared for 'Maximum Attack' in the forests. However he was now entering Escort country.

The RS1800 had grown into the RS, with 15 inch wheels and various other tweaks. The Stratos meanwhile was going backwards, with its 24 valve engine banned.

Through Yorkshire Mikkola and Alen swapped fastest times, then in Kielder Mikkola turned it up to eleven. He beat Alen by thirty seconds in Hamsterly to take the lead and then took two minutes off the Stratos in next two stages.

Alen hung on grimly for a while, but was last seen by the side of the road in Twiglees with the back open. An Italian mechanic, asked to explain, just gave some exaggerated hand gestures and said "Mayonnaise..." The official reason was given as gearbox failure. With Munari parked up with electrical problems, that was that.

1979

Or that should have been that.

However next year Alen was back with another Stratos. Lancia had found an old car for him and it had been prepared by a private garage. For a while there was a second Stratos on the entry list, for Bernard Darniche, who'd won two rallies that year and retired whilst leading two more, but in the end the Frenchman was a no-show in Chester.

Once again Alen led over the Sunday stages, and once again he was overtaken in the forests. He pulled a bit of time back later in the rally in the fog, but eventually could only manage fifth.

1981

In 1981 British fans got their first sight of the Audi Quattro and the little Renault 5 Turbo. But for me there was only one car to see, Markku Alen driving another museum piece Stratos. And I finally got his autograph.

Unfortunately he was never on the pace and eventually put the car into a ditch in the Scottish borders.

That really was that.

2005 - 2012

The RAC itself turned into the Network Q and then got itself stuck in south Wales, eventually becoming the Wales Rally GB.

However there were still people who remembered what it used to be like, and so in 2004 the De Lacy motorclub launched the Roger Albert Clark rally for historic two wheel drive rally cars.

In 2005 alco-pop king and former British Rally Champion Steve Perez entered a Lancia, and it was time for the next generation of little Porters to see a Stratos in action.

His classic car was never able to keep up with latest Escorts, some of which have some very un-seventies mods, but he was the fans favourite. There is still nothing like the sound of an Italian V6 coming through the dark, and no rally car before or since - including the Ford RS200 - has ever matched its lines.

It may never have won an RAC, but for British rally fans, the Stratos is still a very special car.

1978 RAC Lombard Rally

Pictures taken at the Trentham Gardens Special Stage.


The previous year's winner, and the next year's World Champion, Bjorn Waldegarde.


Another future World Champion, and the original Stig, Mr Blomqvist in the I-can't-believe-they-rallied-something-that-big Saab 99 Turbo.


Great sound, great colour scheme, great car and a great driver: Markku 'Maximum Attack' Alen.


A future double World Champion, Walter Rohrl acting as chauffeur to Christian Geistdorfer, who is sat in the back.


The late Tony Pond in the growling TR7 V8. Only two carbs. still at this time, but still plenty of grunt.


Still top Brit, Roger Clark. Although somewhere out there was a gate post with his name on it.


Sandro Munari. 'El Draco' on his last RAC.


Then the new kid on the block - Russell Brookes.


Penti Airikkala. He never had any luck on the RAC with Chevette, but eleven years later he was to win the event in a Mitsubishi Galant.


John Haugland in the 'surprising' Skoda 130RS


It's a Wartburg. A what? Exactly.


And there's me, aged eight, watching one of the Italian Junior Rally Team in his little Autobianchi.

Obituary: The Tour de Corse

It was incredibly dangerous, the spectators were unruly and frequently partisan and you had to be French to win it, but maybe we're going to miss the Tour de Corse.

The Rally of France, which ended this weekend, has now moved to the mainland, but for the previous three and a half decades it was on the little island of Corsica. With long stages and short road sections, the Tour de Corse was in many ways a continuation of the old road races such as the Mille Miglia and Targe Florio.

It was also known as The Rally of 1000 Corners, and as well as the bends competitors often had to contend with wild pigs, locals using the rally route in their cars and gravel shovelled onto the road by spectators. Carlos Sainz even met a bull on a stage in 1990, quite appropriate for the driver they called El Toro.

The Tour de Corse had been in the World Rally Championship since it began in 1973. For the first decade and a half it was largely ignored by the outside world, and was in effect a round of the French National series masquerading as a World Event. Before Colin McRae's two wins in 1997 and 1998, only three foreigners had ever won;Sandro Munari, Markku Alen and Carlos Sainz. In the first two decades Italian cars won twelve times and were withdrawn whilst leading twice.

The Tour de Corse is usually remembered for the wrong reason: the sabotage of the Leyland team in 1978, the death of Attilio Bettega in 1985, and worst of all the fiery end of Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto the following year.


That crash also marked the death of Group B. These years were certainly exciting, but on twisty tarmac like Corsica it was the height of folly. 500bhp, plastic bodywork, no under body protection and fuel tanks under the seats were no way to go rallying if you valued your life.

The death of Group B did make Corsica interesting again though. For a long time it was the only true tarmac round of the championship, and that meant two wheel drive held out longer here than anywhere else. The Audi Quattro never won, and the Lancia 037 Rally was king until ousted by the Peugeot 205T16. In the Group A era Corsica saw the only victories of the Sierra Cosworth and the old style BMW M3, the latter the last front engined, rear wheel drive, normally aspirated car to win a World Rally. Eventually rally cars ceased to be specialised and the same cars won in Corsica as everywhere else, although lightweight 'Formula Two' cars in the 1990s threatened a shock result a couple of times.


Classic Tour de Corse's are harder to remember. Darniche's victory in a private Stratos over the official Lancia team in 1975 was one, as was his victory in the, by then ancient, Stratos in 1981, a win he put down to sheer physical endurance. In the 1990s victory was often a matter of seconds, and in 1995 a Subaru manager calculated that they had run the equivalent of two Grand Prix and effectively had nine cars on the same lap.

However my choice of the best Tour de Corse ever was 1982. It was sunny, of course, the island was clogged with traffic, of course, and the spectators were unruly, of course. The day before it started HMS Sheffield was sunk by a (French) Exocet missile and the day it ended the (French-Canadian) F1 driver Gilles Villeneuve was killed in qualifying at the Belgian Grand Prix. Meanwhile in Parc Ferme in Ajaccio was perhaps the most exciting line up of cars yet assembled for a World Rally.

In the days when a 245bhp Opel Ascona 400 was a bit tasty, the average output of the top 12 cars was 315bhp. We had a brace of Renault 5 Turbos (265bhp), a Porsche 911 (280bhp), a pair of Lancia 037 Rally's on their debut (310bhp), a Ferrari 308 (315bhp), two Audi Quattros (330bhp) and mightiest of all, Bernard Darniche's 430bhp BMW M1.


Most of the exotics fell away pretty quickly. The Quattros couldn't go round the corners, the Lancias were in pre-Evolution trim and handled abysmally, and Darniche retired whilst lying fourth, but the rally was interesting never-the-less.


In the end it was the agility Jean Ragnotti's Renault against the power of Jean-Claude Andruet's Ferrari. Andruet shot into an early lead, but Ragnotti overhauled him as the roads got narrower and twistier. Round the island they blasted swapping fastest times, Ragnotti in front, with Andruet catching him up where the roads were wider. Then the rain came, just as Andruet had started a long stage on slicks. Later he had brake trouble and received road penalties, but the weather had already given Renault the event. Ragnotti, a likable former stunt driver, celebrated with his party trick of smashing plates over his head at the post-rally party.

To the outside world it mattered little, the man who was to become World Champion that year, Walter Rohrl, wasn't even at the event, but fun was had by almost all.

Almost, because one man who wasn't at the post-rally party was Attilio Bettaga. He had been flown to hospital in Italy the previous day after breaking his legs in an accident that was horrifyingly similar to the one that was to claim his life three years later.

Corsica was always a very dangerous kind of fun.