Wednesday, April 6, 2011

RSI (random short interlude): My first rally

My first rally: the 2000 Olympion Rally, in Greece.
This rally was set in the area around Itea.  It included stages that were also run, in parts, in the WRC Acropolis Rally.  It was a part of the European Championship and the competition was pretty tough for that level.  There were guys like Aris Vovos, Jean Pierre Richelmi... 

The car I drove was a Toyota Celica st185 GrA that I bought from Henning Solberg a couple years back.

We heard that the Solberg brothers were selling their cars (they had two almost same ones) from a guy we knew from TTS (Toyota Team Sweden).  At the time TTS was quite busy with all the ex-factory Celicas and Corollas that were being run privately.  They were very competitive and came damn near winning the Swedish rally with Thomas Radstrom in a TTS Corolla.  This whole situation was quite funny really and I bet Didier Auriol and Carlos Sainz (the Toyota official drivers) must have been rather annoyed about that local guy kicking their behinds in a private car... 

So anyway the Solberg's had some st185's for sale so we went to their house to see them.  Henning and "soon to be superstar" Petter Solberg met us there and showed us the beauties. 

We knew from our Swedish friend that Henning's car was more reliable because it did not have something called "the hang-on clutch" which Petter's car had.  So we came straight in and said we were taking Henning's.  Petter asked if we were not interested in his....

Nah....Henning's is fine.

After they sold their st185's the two brothers got themselves some st205 Celicas, the newer model.

3 comments:

  1. Hi,I have driven a lot of rally with this Celica,fantastic car,Norwegian reg DF85943,I regret that I sold it.Sold it to Netherland in 2007.

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  2. Was this your first rally in your career Anthony?

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  3. Yes it was but I had done some driving as a "0" car on some other events. My first ever drive as a "0" car. It was in South Sweden in 1997 or 98 with a VW Golf together with Per Carlsson as co-driver. We did not have notes. He just told me when to brake...

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