Waldegard holds commanding lead

Press, 29 June 1982, Page 32

Waldegard holds commanding lead

From JOHN FRIDD, in Te Haroto Bjorn Waldegard, of Sweden, took a commanding lead in the Motogard Rally last evening when his bitter rival, Hannu Mikkola, of Finland, struck trouble in his potent Audi Quattro. Mikkola won the first special stage of the final leg south of Taupo last evening but then lost six minutes on the next stage when a wire came off the Audi distributor. His run of bad luck continued on stage 25 near Tarawera late last evening and drivers arriving at the finish reported seeing Mikkola’s car crawling along with a suspected broken driveshaft, and some even thought that he may have lost a wheel. It was doubtful that he

would reach the end of the stage as there were some steep hills to negotiate. This left Toyota Celicas in first and second place, with Waldegard, the 1979 world champion, holding a four-and-a-half minute lead over his Swedish team-mate, Per Eklund.

Walter Rohrl, of West Germany, moved up to third place in his Opel ahead of the 1980 Motogard winner, Timo Salonen (Finland, Datsun Silvia). Dave Parkes, of Motueka, ran into trouble on the first special stage last evening. He ran off the road and crunched up a bank and by the time he and his co-driver, Stu Green, were able to winch their Escort back on to the road they had lost 20 minutes, and their hard-won ninth place.

Predictions that Mikkola would take the lead during yesterday’s early morning stages back to Taupo proved wrong, as the experienced Finn was content to stay within half a minute of Waldegard and not riskcrashing off .the icy roads. The Audi team manager, Mr David Sutton, of Britain, said there was no need for his sole remaining driver to take too many risks. “Don’t forget that we were six minutes adrift on Sunday and made up huge chunks of that deficit to get back to second, so there was really no need to take risks last night on the roads, which were very slippery,” he said.

This statement indicates that perhaps Mikkola will leave his bid for the lead until the daylight stages into Wellington today, which could produce an exciting

finish in a rally in which the lead had already changed six times by the end of the second leg at Taupo yesterday morning. One driver who did not reach the end of leg two at Taupo was Shekhar Mehta, of Kenya, five-times winner of the tough Safari Rally in Africa. Mehta was rocketing down a straight only 3km from the end of the final special stage south of Taupo when his Datsun’s motor stopped dead with an expensive sounding noise and he was left fuming in the freezing forest. The Datsun mechanics had not pulled down the 160 J’s motor by yesterday afternoon but it is suspected to have serious internal damage. Mehta was holding a steady seventh place behind Rod Millen when his motor exploded.

The demise of Mehta promoted everyone behind him one place and left Dave Parkes, of Moteuka, in ninth place after the second of the three legs of the 2211 km rally.

Parkes had driven brilliantly to leave behind the drivers of much more powerful cars in his Escort 1600 and was leading Morrie Chandler (Auckland, Lancer 1600) by over 20 minutes in his class when the cars left Taupo on the final leg last evening.

All four South Islanders who 'started the rally were among the 41 starters in the final leg last evening. Grant Aitken, of Dunedin, better known for his circuit-racing prowess, was sitting in twentieth place in a Datsun 1600 after deciding at the last minute to compete: "Because

1 would have been going up to watch, anyway."

Inky Tulloch, of Mataura, also a circuit-racing "name" was, battling along in thirtythird place in his Datsun 160 J after losing almost an hour on the first day with an engine problem and John Sergei, of Christchurch, was two places lower than Tulloch in his tiny Starlet 1300 after some early rally trouble. Sergei was 2 hours 16 minutes behind the leader, Waldegard.

Times after 25 of the 38 special stages:— Waldegard. 7h 25min ss, T. Eklund. 7h 28 min 31, 2: Rohrl, 7h 29min 595. 3: Salonen. 7b 36min 495. 4; Rod Millen. 7b 44min 38si 5; Jean-Louis Leyraud. 8h I3min 295. 6; Tony Teesdale, 8h IBmin 16s. 7; Paul Adam. 8h 29min 555. 8; Reg’Cook. 8h 30min 10s, 9; Malcolm Stewart. 8h 31 min 20s. 10.