Miss Mouton early rally leader

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 19

Miss Mouton early rally leader

From

JOHN FRIDD

in Rotorua Michele Mouton must eat a lot of carrots, for as darkness fell on the Sanyo Rally of New Zealand on Saturday evening she got faster and faster in her potent Audi Quattro. The vivacious Frenchwoman won special stage six by three seconds from her unlucky teammate, Hannu Mikkola (Finland), then blasted through the next two stages — which were fast and suited the German cars — to win by even more convincing margins. As the crews toured into “Sulfur City” Rotorua, late on Saturday evening, Mouton was leading by 13 seconds from the controversial Swede, Stig Blomqvist, the third Audi driver. Walter Rohrl was third, just six seconds behind Blomqvist and eager to strike back yesterday morning.

Hannu Mikkola had a wretched first division. On the very first special stage, just south of Auckland, his Audi’s motor threw a cam-shaft-belt and he effected makeshift repairs before limping out of the stage, losing about 20 minutes. His face looked even gloomier at the end of stage two, for his motor had lost its turbo boost and he had lost another minute on the leaders. Mikkola finished in the top three on the other six stages of the first leg but as the, crews stopped for the night at Rotorua he was a huge 22 minutes behind the leader, Mouton, facing another tough fight-back as he did last year. Rohrl had won the first special stage of the rally in his amazing Lancia Rally but Blomqvist took the second stage to wrest the rally lead from Rohrl, who promptly took it back by beating the Swede by 5 seconds on stage three to

lead by one second. Blomqvist won the Mystery Creek special stage to again lead but Rohrl kept in front when Mouton won stage six but then the Frenchwoman inherited the front-runner’s position after stage seven. Brian Stokes, of Waikuku, was the top South Islander when the first leg ended on Saturday evening. Nursing his damaged arm, broken when a cow kicked it a month ago. Stokes was lying in twenty-first place in his

Escort 1600. Mark Errington, of Christchurch, was the next fastest South Islander. Errington is running his relatively underpowered Ford Escort Sport in the competitive group two section after his original entry in the unodified group A section was disallowed by the scrutineers. After leg one he was thirty-fifth, two places ahead of Peter Watt, of Omakau, in his Mazda RX7. Another Christchurch driver, Ross Jeffrey, was

forty-first after leg one. Jeffrey lost time on stage four at Mystery Creek when the rough grass sections broke the rear suspension on his Escort RS2OOO. John Sergei, of Christchurch, drove aggressively in his Toyota Starlet to fight his way up to twentieth - place by the end of stage five, only to get lost on a touring stage and have a 15minute penalty added to his over-all time, dropping him to forty-sixth place.