Warriors On Wheels
The Sun Herald
Saturday April 10, 1993
FORGET Indy and Formula One, real men drive rally cars. Complete maniacs drive them from London to Sydney. When the world's longest marathon vroom-vrooms out of the British capital next Saturday, 106 crews will be hoping their machines are more tightly screwed down than their marbles.
Ahead lie 18,000 torturous kilometres, 15 frontiers, endless deserts, daunting mountain ranges and unknown political turmoil before the chequered curtain comes down at the Opera House on May 16.
With "the pits" consisting of no more than a shove from a friendly rival, do-it-yourself repairs and 30 days of intense concentration, this mechanised version of the Light Brigade makes Mansell, Senna and Co look like joyriders.
Even to race director Nick Brittan, competitors in the 25th Anniversary London to Sydney Marathon, sponsored by Lombard, "are a little bit insane", while to mesmerised tribes folk, they could be Martians; yet to the teeming millions of the subcontinent, they are heroes.
Billed as "the last great adventure for man and machine" back in 1968, this year's commemorative re-run is shorter, hitches an airlift over half of Asia and includes satellite coms and hotel beds - but is no less demanding.
"Last time," says Australia's Ian Vaughan, who finished third in 1968, "the main problem was finding decent maps; this time it's the changing world map."
Indeed, Brittan had to act more like Henry Kissinger than Henry Ford as he dodged heat-seeking missiles, mortared hotels and bureaucracy of Himalayan proportions - and that was just doing the recce |
Yesterday's playground has become today's war zone so the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan (due to civil wars) and Iran (due to a visa price rocket from$30 to $12,000 |) will be given a wide berth. The Balkans and Bombay are still in but, with impenetrable mobs of humanity in India and the forbidding width of Australia as the home straight, political instability won't be the only thing crews have to worry about.
PILOTING a rally car is like being one of the ingredients in a giant blender: others being vast helpings of earth, a seasoning of mud and sand and the barest hint of tarmac.
Toss in special speed sections, mouth-watering views from overhanging hairpins and a sprinkling of swamp and forest and you understand why it can be a tap dance for survival on the pedals.
For the London to Sydney, switch on for a month.
Even though much of the route is now sealed there are still enough corrugations, hidden crevices, potholes and pitfalls to ensure that anyone who staggers up the Opera House steps will do so feeling like a cross between a milkshake and Mike Tyson's punching bag.
Speeds may be dawdling compared to Formula One but the same icicle nerves are required along with even greater endurance as the road ahead is scanned like a radar screen, while crews have to cope with every contingency from denting a local's donkey cart to a broken camshaft.
DIPLOMACY and a degree in engineering are prerequisites but Vaughan, one of Ford's vice-presidents, and co-driver Barry Lake, a motoring journalist, deny this is why they are among Australia's best hopes.
"It's the car," says Vaughan, and one look at his lovingly reconstructed Falcon GT and you can see why.
With the same tank-like body of '68 and as many gizmos as a jumbo jet, he is confident of doing what he did a quarter of a century ago - blasting through the field on home territory and will be "very happy to be among the leading group when we hit Fremantle again".
"The Australian cars are heavier and tougher and, just like in sales, it could come down to a battle between ourselves and Holden," says the executive whose experience in product development may come in very handy.
"It's been easy to keep track of the car," he explained, "as every time it changed hands, the owner would call me thinking I would give him a better price. In the end, we paid $6,000 for the shell but it was put together bit by bit by Bruce Hodgson and fine tuned in Melbourne."
Hodgson then built his own entry from a second hand V8.
Aussies make up 46 per cent of the field with the formidable pair of Ross Dunkerton and Harry Mansson also highly fancied.
But favourite is Pom ace Roger Clark whose broken axle on the penultimate day snatched seemingly certain victory from his grasp in 1968.
Now 53, Clark will be driving the same Ford Escort with his 22-year-old son Matthew.
Winner of both the inaugural event and the only other LSM, in 1977, is Scot Andy Cowan who has had to "borrow" his Hillman Hunter from the British Museum. Typifying the event's Corinthian spirit, Cowan only made it to the finish the first time after a shove off an anthill from Aussie Evan Green.
Green later lost a wheel, Cowan stopped to help but the rules only allowed service crews to respond to written requests and Green was eventually rescued by a local pilot who flew in a mechanic and part after spotting a message scrawled in the dirt near Broken Hill.
No wonder he became a best-selling author |
WITH only models of the original period permitted, entries range from the Rolls Corniche convertible, owned by Tony Wilson of Mt Eliza, to the VW Beetle of fellow-Victorian George Reynolds.
But in what is anything but an old crocks race, drivers come in all shapes and ages, too, and include two husband and wife teams and a 66-year-old granny, Sydney-born Pam Durham.
Guaranteed to lift the whole show - literally - off the ground, are two giant Antonovs, Russian-made transport planes that will haul the entire field, with the help of specially built mezzanine floors, from Ankara to Delhi and then from Bombay to Perth.
According to clerk of the course, Les Needham, the whole thing is a logistical nightmare making previously daunting domestic rallies seem like an afternoon spin.
"You cannot believe the difficulties that 15 frontiers, six languages and eight currencies can create," he says.
Still, he will have a 20-man mobile HQ linked to a light aircraft and a satellite, which was not dreamed of in '68.
"In the first event," he says, "the only way they got news out of Afghanistan was by morse code from the British Embassy in Kabul."
If there will be no carry on up the Khyber this time, with 25 veterans of that epic again on the grid, nostalgia is bound to be an influential backseat passenger for some.
However, up-front competition will be fierce on the decisive special sections where the 200 horsepower and two manpower will be put to the test.
Some will sink to their axles in sand, have to call upon human tow trucks to raise them from the mud; others will be lost causes, heart-breakingly near the end.
Whatever happens, it is to be hoped that the horrors that have plagued its shorter but accident-prone Paris-Dakar rival can be avoided.
Accused of being a rich boys' ram-raid on Africa, that event has given the sport a bad name and is, according to Cowan, "incredibly dangerous because you are hurtling over terrible terrain and don't know what's coming."
The nearest to a disaster in the London-Sydney befell Brittan in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
Having booked the entire field into the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo, the strife in Bosnia caused a change in route "but I couldn't cancel," he explained, "as the place was reduced to rubble by a mortar."
AN EVEN closer call came in Kabul where he exited in a Russian made fighter that somehow dodged Mujahadeen missiles.
Let us hope that the London-Sydney convoy gets through and can admire the scenery as well as the technology. As Vaughan says, "I hope we can take the odd photo this time."
But no doubt they will uphold the view of former Formula One star, Jacky Ickx who once said: "It takes a different kind of man to race in the wild, taking all that nature can throw at him. Once you've done this, racing on the track is just playing at driving cars."
By any standards, the London-Sydney is one hell of a way to go to the opera.
© 1993 The Sun Herald