Motor Racing: Mini Marathon Morphs Into Mad Dash for Monte Carlo

The Monegasques are credited with introducing the word ‘rally’ to the automobile glossary. It probably came some distance after ‘affluence’ and ‘Ã la mode’ in the local lexicon of significant terminology but it was typical of the principality that the invention of the Monte Carlo Rally in 1911 had money as an ulterior motive. With trade being slack in the winter months, it was decided that an international rally, starting from various points in Europe and finishing in the winter warmth of Monaco, would draw attention to Monte Carlo and do much for its balance of payments.

This year’s event will be the seventy fourth running of a rally that has changed beyond recognition, so much so that the majority of Monegasques will be forgiven for failing to realize that it is taking place next weekend. The Thursday-evening start, for all its grandeur in Place du Casino, will be no more than a token gesture as the crews cross the ramp and head for bed, ready to leave Monaco at 7am the following morning for the 50-mile drive to the first special stage at St Sauveur.

Competitors will tackle three stages totaling a mere 36 miles, return to Monaco for servicing before repeating the loop and heading back to Monte
Carlo in time for an evening meal and a good night’s sleep. There will be a similar circuit on Saturday and a brief version on
Sunday morning before the ceremonial finish on arguably the most prestigious quayside in the world. And that will be it.

This dilution of difficulty is not the fault of the Automobile Club de Monaco. It is typical of the trend instigated worldwide
for the benefit of television and the convenience of enjoying permanent facilities at central servicing. Gone are the days when repairs were carried out at the roadside as cars headed into the night and a relentless succession of different stages. Rallying in the twenty-first century may have about as much relevance to this event in its prime as a Ferrari has to a starting handle, but no serious rally driver today would wish to be associated with the Monte Carlo Rally in its first incarnation. Described as a ‘comfort race through Europe’, competitors were not under the
slightest pressure during runs from Paris, Geneva, Boulogne, Vienna, Brussels and Berlin, since a generous time allowance called for an average speed of 7mph. A prize was awarded for the best decorated motor car, the winner triumphantly posing by a vehicle festooned with flowers and garlands.

The organizers soon abandoned the comfort image, switching instead to a complicated handicap system based on
the mileage from various starting points. The first Briton to win the event was The Hon Victor Bruce in 1926. He opted to start from John O’ Groats and had a job reaching the north of Scotland, never mind battling back through the snow in his AC tourer to begin his 1,529-mile journey south to the Cote d’Azur. British participation was high. In 1931, Donald Healey won at the wheel of a 4.5-litre Invicta, the two-seater open sports car being a brave choice for the 2,000-mile run from Stavanger. With the entry regularly exceeding 200 cars and the required average speed rising to between
30 and 40mph, the rally attracted the attention of the media and, in turn, the major motor manufacturers as their products were seen to do battle, primarily with the weather.

By 1956, the entry had fallen to 351 (the record having been 440 two years before), 73 of the starters choosing Glasgow. One of them managed no more than 200 yards before slithering downhill and colliding terminally with a doubledecker bus. The event was won by Ronnie Adams, the owner of a Belfast textile company carrying an additional pair of crew members within the spacious surrounds of his Jaguar Mk VII as they fought through snow and ice. A few years later, appalling weather accounted for just 59 of the 303 starters reaching Monte Carlo.

Mercedes-Benz provided a hint of what was to come in 1960 when the German firm realized the rally was likely to be settled on the final section; two laps of a 179-mile mountain circuit where marks would be lost at six times the rate awarded on the 2,200-mile run to the principality. Mercedes decided to instigate the outrageous and unheard-of business of practicing for six weeks before the event. The German cars walked off with the first three places despite having been well down the order when they first arrived in Monaco. Now the gloves were off. No more would packing a shovel in the boot and hoping for the best be good enough. Success on the Monte Carlo Rally was to prove one of the most productive references a manufacturer could wish for. BMC proved it in 1964 when Paddy Hopkirk gave the Mini Cooper a victory that commanded full-page advertisements in every British national newspaper. The Mini won again 12 months later but when the impudent little British cars filled the first three places in 1966, it was more than the organizers could swallow. The Minis, along with Roger Clark’s Ford Lotus-Cortina in fourth place, were disqualified for allegedly having illegal spotlights, a charge that the British rejected as vigorously as the organizers embraced their loosely worded rules. By sheer coincidence, the fifth-place car happened to be a Citroen.

The embarrassed ‘winner’ was Pauli Toivonen. Twenty years later his son, Henri, would do the job properly, this being the young Finn’s last victory before a fatal crash as his Lancia Delta left the road in Corsica, hit a tree and exploded. Apart from concern about the rising performance of this latest breed of ‘Supercar’, the rallying world knew it was necessary to address the less important business of runs across Europe that had become an anachronism with the advent of better roads and purpose-built rally cars. Indeed, Toivonen had said his most demanding task on the drive to Monte Carlo had been the selection of music on a specially installed tape deck.

The Monte Carlo Rally may have gone too far in the other direction but its reputation remains a fierce one on the contemporary calendar. Carlos Sainz won it three times in the 1990s before retiring. The former world champion has no doubts about the unique challenge. ‘It is still the event which every rally driver in the world dreams about winning,’ says Sainz. ‘It is the most famous of them all - but it is not easy. When the weather conditions are bad, the rally is extremely difficult. The most challenging aspect is the tyre choice. Even though the complexity of choice is not as wide as it used to be, the limitations placed on the teams now make it just as difficult. Quite often the rally is not won by having the best equipment for the conditions. It is won by having equipment that is the least unsatisfactory in the wrong conditions.’

Whether or not this blue-riband event has changed for better or worse is probably best decided by next weekend’s world championship event and the more relaxed Historic Monte Carlo Rally starting a week later from cities such as Barcelona and Copenhagen. The former has 53 entries; the latter, 347.