STARS OF THE STAGE When the first began in 1973, only the car manufacturers fought for a crown; it wasn’t until 1979 that the drivers were recognised with their own world title. They soon made up for lost time, however, and over the past four decades the WRC has been a constant source of drama, heroism and displays of unbelievable skill. So as the Festival celebrates 40 years of the World Rally Drivers’ Championship this weekend, we remember some of those who have fought for and won the sport’s greatest prize

STORY BY ANGUS FRAZER

Left: and co-driver celebrate victory in the 2002 Rally GB. Right: Sébastien Ogier powers his to third in the 2019 Argentine Rally ’s first World Champion proved that while sublime skill and dogged determination are both prerequisites for victory, ruthlessness Björn is not. Described by those who knew him as a true gentleman (and sometimes as a teddy bear), the late Björn Waldegård won the inaugural World Rally Drivers’ Championship in 1979 (prior to that, the competition had Waldegård been held for two years as an FIA ‘Cup for Drivers’, won by in 1977 and Markku Alén in 1978). All through that season, Waldegård battled , his team-mate not just at Ford in the pace-setting Escort RS but also at Mercedes-Benz. The German company had 1979 hired the duo to pilot the powerful if unwieldy 5.0-litre V8 automatic 450SLC Coupé on the Safari and Ivory Coast events. The year had begun badly for the Swede: a healthy lead on the was destroyed when rocks were placed in the path of his Escort, leaving to sweep to victory in his Stratos. Waldegård won in Greece and Canada but team-mate Mikkola took a resounding victory on that year’s RAC, with Waldegård trailing in ninth. In the final event of the season, the Ivory Coast Rally, Waldegård brought his Mercedes home in second behind Mikkola’s sister car, and ‘Walle’ won the championship by one point. Björn continued to rally for many years, becoming the oldest driver to win a round of the WRC when he took victory on the 1990 Safari at the age of 46. On one occasion, he was mildly embarrassed to have crashed while avoiding a dog, having always told his own children they should “never turn the wheel to save an animal”. But he consoled himself with the thought that “maybe that dog was the friend of a child in Africa”.

Opposite: victory in Greece – and the smile on Björn’s face says it all as co-driver Hans Thorszelius quenches his thirst. Left: sideways at the Swedish Rally, keeping his title hopes on track by clinching second place behind ’s Saab

84 40 YEARS OF THE WORLD RALLY DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP FESTIVAL OF SPEED 2019 85 Armed with a four-wheel-drive Quattro – when his rivals were still making do with rear-wheel drive – it was a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ Hannu Mikkola would win the Hannu WRC drivers’ crown in the early 1980s. Not that it was just down to the car, though. As Mikkola recalls, rallies in that era were exceptionally tough, no matter what you were driving: “On the RAC Rally at that time, the Mikkola real action happened in the night, and they were very long nights. The rallies were driven blind then – not like now, where they practice. You had to really keep yourself committed at 4am through Kielder Forest with the rain falling and the ground hard with ice.” Such commitment had seen Hannu finish 1983 twice runner-up and twice third over the first four years of the title. At the start of 1983, the Finn was determined that this time he would not be left politely applauding the victor at the end of the year. The crunch came in Round 9 of 12 that year, on his home rally in . Hannu had already taken victory in Sweden, Portugal and Argentina, but his rival Walter Röhrl had also won three times for Lancia. In Finland, Hannu saw his championship challenge falter just minutes into the 1000 Lakes Rally. “On the first stage my gearbox went and I was five minutes down – I knew if I wanted to be World Champion I had to win,” Hannu recalls. As he’d already mastered the ultra-fast gravel roads of the ‘Finnish Grand Prix’, winning the event six times, where better to make his stand? “I don’t think I have ever tried so hard or driven so fast. In the end I won the rally by 15 seconds or something!” Hannu proved himself a worthy champion, regardless of what he drove.

Opposite: Hannu Mikkola flings his A2 over the yumps of the 1983 1000 Lakes Rally in his native Finland. Hannu screwed his courage to the sticking point, and nailed the accelerator to the floor, to take the win and secure the drivers’ title

86 FESTIVAL OF SPEED 2019 87 Every time a driver straps themselves into a competition car, they accept a certain amount of risk. But at the height of the era in 1986, danger reached unacceptable levels. With the deaths of three spectators in Portugal, followed by the demise of Lancia superstars and Sergio Cresto in Corsica, what was meant to be the sport’s greatest year degenerated into a season from Hell. Twenty-seven-year-old Juha Kankkunen found himself in the epicentre of a storm. The 1986, 1987, 1991, 1993 Finn had been drafted into the team from , where he had cut his WRC teeth and won the 1985 Safari and Ivory Coast rallies in a Celica Twincam Turbo. Now he would pilot the 500bhp, mid-engined 205 T16 E2. With his Wyatt Earp moustache, ice-blue eyes and gun-slinger stare, it never looked like he would flinch at the challenge. Nor did he, winning 1986’s second round in Sweden. Victories in Greece and New Zealand, plus a second-place in Finland, put Kankkunen on course for the title. Then in Sanremo the stewards excluded Peugeot from the event over alleged technical infringements, swinging the balance in favour of Lancia’s Markku Alén. That decision was overturned – but not until several days after the end of the year’s final event. Kankkunen was confirmed as champion, and if the champagne tasted a little flat by then, not to worry; Juha took three more titles during his 20-year career – two with Lancia and one with Toyota. To date, he is the only driver to have won with three different manufacturers.

Opposite: Kankkunen’s T16 E2 tears through snow at the 1986 , where he finished fifth. Below: celebrating victory in Sweden in 1986 alongside co-driver Juha Piironen

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Born in Bassano del Grappa in northern Italy, 1988, 1989 Massimo ‘Miki’ Biasion came to international prominence in the Group B era, when he won the 1983 European Rally Championship in a Lancia Rally 037 run by the Italian privateer team. He later stepped up and drove for the Lancia works team in a Group B Delta S4. However, his greatest success came in the later era, which became the top tier after Group B cars were banned at the end of 1986. Biasion took back-to-back world titles at the wheel of a Delta HF Integrale. It’s true to say the Delta was the class of the field from the moment it first appeared in 1987, securing Lancia the manufacturers’ title six years in a row. But Biasion still had to beat his formidable team-mates to the title, and in 1988 and 1989 these included , Mikael Ericsson and Markku ‘Maximum Attack’ Alén. Biasion’s meticulous eye for detail was matched to a calm manner, and unlike some of his countrymen, his talents were not confined to asphalt, as victories on the Safari, Acropolis and Olympus rallies proved. He may have achieved even more success on loose surfaces had he been given the chance to compete on them more frequently; however, such was Lancia’s pool of driving talent at the time, Biasion was not even entered on the Swedish, 1000 Lakes or RAC rallies in 1988, making his complete domination of the points table at the end of the season even more remarkable. Today, Biasion has found a new lease of life driving on historic events – usually in one of his beloved – and he’s here at Goodwood this weekend.

Opposite: Miki Biasion and his co-driver start their 1989 season – and the defence of their 1988 title – exactly as they mean to go on with victory on the Monte Carlo Rally. Four more wins secured them the title by a convincing 41 points

90 40 YEARS OF THE WORLD RALLY DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP FESTIVAL OF SPEED 2019 91 In 1995, Colin McRae proved himself the best in the world when he drove his Impreza over the finish line of that year’s RAC Rally. At the age of 27 years and 109 days, he was – and remains – the youngest ever winner of the World Rally Drivers’ Championship. It wasn’t an easy win: by the mid-point of that season Colin was languishing in sixth place in the standings with 20 points, while team-mate led with 50. McRae struck back, winning in New Zealand – and with Sainz unable to compete due to injury, Colin began to close the gap. Retirement for Sainz in Australia and second place for Colin behind ’s Mitsubishi elevated the Scot to second in the championship. Kankkunen set an epic pace in Catalunya. When asked about his plan to deal with the Finn, Colin replied with typical humour: ‘Shoot him, maybe.’ The Toyota driver eventually crashed and Sainz took the lead, with McRae seconds behind. Team boss David Richards ordered his drivers to hold position. Initially Colin refused, ignoring the Subaru personnel standing in the middle of a stage trying to slow him down. Eventually he relented and took a time penalty to give Sainz the win. Colin The pair started the final round in the UK on 70 points each. With supernatural pace in the rain and fog (which he admitted “seemed to come fairly easily”), he overhauled Sainz’s early lead to win. Subaru took the manufacturers’ McRae title and McRae was Britain’s first champion. More crowns should have followed – after his 1995 title, McRae was runner-up three times before his tragic death in 2007. Perhaps a more measured driving style could have brought more wins? But then, as every McRae fan knows, wins aren’t everything. “If in doubt, flat out.” 1995

Opposite: the camera catches Colin and co-driver in relaxed mood on their way to victory in the 1995 New Zealand Rally. His next win – his home event, the RAC Rally – was watched by an estimated two million fans, who lined every mile of every stage

92 FESTIVAL OF SPEED 2019 93 Petter Solberg

Has anyone ever been more passionate about 2003 their chosen sport than Petter Solberg? His victory celebrations are the stuff of legend. Occasionally they got the better of him, like when he climbed out of his Subaru at the 2008 Bettega Memorial rally sprint to ride on the roof. All went well until he slipped while getting back in. Petter ended up chasing the car down the track, laughing all the way. One of the Norwegian’s most exhilarating moments came at the end of the 2003 Rally GB, when he beat Sébastien Loeb to win not only the rally but also the world title, having already triumphed in Cyprus, Australia and that year. But there were lows too. The story goes that at Christmas 2008 he didn’t even open his presents, such was his despair at Subaru’s withdrawal from the WRC, which left him without a drive. In the months that followed he showed his true steel (and considerable business acumen) by putting together a deal, in the teeth of the worldwide recession, to run a private Citroën and get himself back in the fight for the next three years. He finished his WRC career where it started, returning to Ford in 2012. Then it was off on new adventures in , where he again ran his own team with wife Pernilla, and took two more FIA world drivers’ titles. Now that ‘Mr Hollywood’ has announced his retirement from front-line motorsport, we are delighted that this weekend he joins us in (or perhaps on top of?) his VW Polo Supercar, to celebrate his epic career as only Petter can.

Opposite: Solberg’s sheer joy is clear as he celebrates yet another win – this time in Cyprus in 2003. Left: the image of Petter flat out in a blue Subaru made a huge impression on his son Oliver, who now drives a similarly liveried WRX STI in the US

94 FESTIVAL OF SPEED 2019 95 How many world titles does Sébastien Ogier hold? It’s actually seven, not six, if you count the Junior WRC he won with Citroën in 2008. His success led to a Citroën C4 WRC drive in that year’s Rally GB, where the 24-year-old scored his first stage win. Three years later, Ogier was a team-mate of fellow Frenchman Sébastien Loeb, and almost prevented the grand master taking his eighth world title in a row. In the end, Ogier had to settle for third, leaving Citroën at the end of the season to join WRC newcomers . The German team spent 2012 running a Škoda Fabia S2000 as a warm-up exercise, ahead of the arrival of the VW Polo R WRC in 2013. But from the moment he sat in that car, Sébastien Ogier settled for nothing less than first in the drivers’ championship, winning in the Polo’s debut season and again in 2014, 2015 and 2016, alongside co-driver . VW withdrew at the end of 2016, but in many ways Ogier’s greatest achievements lay ahead of him with the privately run M-Sport team. ‘When you have Sébastien and Julien in your team, you know anything is possible,’ observed team principal Malcolm Wilson. And so it proved, as Ogier took the new Ford Fiesta WRC car to back-to-back titles and a manufacturers’ championship. In 2019, Ogier returned to Citroën, and after wins in Monte Carlo and Mexico, who’d rule out a seventh – or should that be eighth – title? Sébastien Ogier is just one of the champions Sébastien here this weekend, celebrating 40 years of the World Rally Drivers’ Championship. We also celebrate the career of the very first WRC winner, Björn Waldegård. For full details, see Class 6 (which is on the Hill) and Classes 40 to Ogier 44 (on the Forest Rally Stage) in The Weekend

Opposite: a new era dawns at Citroën as Ogier wins the in the C3 – his sixth successive victory in the race. Below: still at the top of his game, Ogier is here this weekend 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018

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