A day in the rally forest

[RTS013]

This is taken from my site, so you can go and read it there too... :D


This weekend I was on a rally in the south of Sweden, called Klappjakten. It was a 3 hour drive to get there from where I live (Stockholm) but it was definitely worth it! I had to start at about 07.00 to get there on time for the start of the rally with a bit of margin, so I was pretty exhausted coming home again at 22.00...

The main reason I made this trip was to meat David Petterson, the driver of the Volvo 242 I made before. He lives about 6 hours away so I hadn't actually met him before, although we have had really good contact for over a year. But now he was about to compete in a rally a little closer to me and so we met almost exactly halfway. I drove 280km and he and his team 250.

Finally arriving to the start/service area, set up at the local school, next thing was to find David among all the other 170 teams or so gathered. But it wasn't so hard actually, as I knew the team-colours. The car was really nice. And it's not a 242 anymore… That one was crashed so bad that it could not be repaired in September last year. So it's a completely new Volvo 940 instead. And it was stunning! And what a noise it made! Beautiful! David was really nice to, and both of us had a great day.

After about an hour it was time for me to get to a good spectator seat in the beautiful nature, and time for David to switch to his flame-proof overall and get into the car together with co-driver Tapio Palola, who also has co-driven for Mikko Hirrvonen to mention one…

I got to a nice junction on stage 2 where I had a good view. And then I waited. I had plenty of time to eat a few sandwiches and watch other cars as David started as number 68, about an hour after the first car.

While waiting I also took some pictures of a few nice cars from the classic category. Not any really good pictures actually, it's difficult to picture a car passing by at high speed! But here they are…

http://rts013.nogripracing.com/rtmods/articles/rallyweekend/pv.jpg
Volvo PV

http://rts013.nogripracing.com/rtmods/articles/rallyweekend/amazon.jpg
Volvo Amazon

http://rts013.nogripracing.com/rtmods/articles/rallyweekend/mini.jpg
(Blurry... :o ) Mini

Then I went back to my car and drove to the end of stage 5. A pretty fast combination of turns was a great place for spectating here so I stayed till David passed and then quickly moved to the start of stage 6, the last one, to see him one more time in action.

http://rts013.nogripracing.com/rtmods/articles/rallyweekend/940.jpg
Volvo 940 :drive:

A few seconds after this picture was taken he was gone in a cloud of dust and the functionaries once again had to fill the ruts with gravel so the next car could have a good start as well. I walked a few hundred meters into the stage and stayed there till all the fun-to-watch cars had passed and then I got back to the service area to say good-bye to David and the team and to get the results of the rally. The latter I'm still waiting for, though, as it's not official yet.

And that was it. The day ended with a 3 hour drive home again. After a well-deserved pizza of course… ;)

[Dan]

cool, looks like it was worth the drive :up:

[Pero_Grozni]

Great report :wave:

You had a great day. Sounds like the usual rally spectating ordeal I go through 3-4 times/year. And the pizza in the end sound very very fammiliar :)

It must be great watching gravel combined with RWD and crazy drivers :up:
Too bad that Slovenian rallys dont take place on gravel and that no cars are RWD or historic :cry: :cry:

This year a few group N scoobys and two Evo 8 lancers is all that they have to show.
Or better said had to show as one of the drivers destroyed his brand new group N evo 8 after only a few stages. I doubt that it had 500 km on the clock.
I have seen the car after the crash from up close-the rear diff broken, the front engine mounts completly bent(almost at an angle 0f 70 degrees- they were straight once :OMG: ).

[Roger]

Good story RTS013. Looks like a good day out - the Volvo looks nearly as good as the one you made ;) .

I wish we had roads like that in the UK, my drive to work would be SO MUCH MORE FUN :D

[alpine]

Fantastic report :trophy: -I wish Rallying was more popular in my neck of the woods...we have great roads but people drive like old ladies :(