Aust. rally star issues warning to Mercedes

Press, 30 August 1980, Page 60

Aust. rally star issues warning to Mercedes

By

JOHN FRIDD

Look out, Mercedes. That’s the message from the Australian rally champion, George. Fury, who was in Christchurch this week as part of the build-up to his drive in a works Datsun 160 J in the Motogard Rally next month.

Fury is spending a few days nosing round the areas through which the 2177 km Motogard will pass. “I want to get some idea what sort of country we will face,” he said. “If there’s a lot of tight forestry stuff we could give the MercedesBenz guys a fright, but if there are too many long straights they will leave us for dead.” , Fury said that the two 195 b.h.p. Datsuns being driven by him and Timo Salonen, of Finland, will have no hope of keeping up with the powerful Fiat Abarth of Walter Rohrl (Germany) and the Masport Escort RS of Pentti Airikkala (Finland), but the reliable Datsuns could still score well if the more powerful cars strike trouble, as often occurred on long events. Fury himself comes to New Zealand fresh from winning the Australian championship in a 255 b.h.p. Group Four Datsun 160 J, so his first job will be to learn to drive the milder Group Two car he will have for the Motogard.' If the Datsuns finished well, there would not be a repeat of the 1979 refusal to remove the cars’ cylinderheads for scrutineers, said Fury. Salonen finished an amazing second in last year’s Motogard, but was disqualified after the Datsun factory refused to allow his car’s head to be lifted. Fury, aged 36, who runs a

mixed farm near Talmalmo, on the New South WalesVictoria border, will run the Motogard as part of a manufactuerer’s team that will draw drivers from four countries — in addition to Salonen the Datsun team also includes Jean-Louis Leyraud (New Caledonia), Bob Robb (Timaru), and Bill Sutherland (Waikaka).

All will be in two-litre Datsun 16OJs.

A long convoy of Mer-cedes-Benz cars on the main road between Christchurch and Nelson yesterday might have led some motorists to believe that there is a millionaires’ conference on somewhere. However, it was just Cable-Price’s way of getting its expensive team of rally cars to Nelson, the starting point of the Motogard Rally. The - cars spent Thursday in Christchurch being prodded and fiddled with by a Ministry of Transport inspector, and all passed their Warrants of Fitness with flying colours, as expected.

Included in the convoy that left Christchurch yesterday morning were five $lOO,OOO 500SLC rally cars and a 280 CE coupe, plus two turbocharged diesel station waggons. There was also a new four-wheel-drive Mercedes cross-country waggon, and two big Mercedes trucks full of spares. Most of the 700 tyres that the four rally drivers will chew through during the Motogard Rally have also been dispatched to Nelson.

The Mercedes drivers will not arrive until September 5, as most are competing in the 1000 Lakes Rally in Finland, which started last night and is round eight of the world drivers’ championship.