Monte Carlo rally to Toivonen

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 80

Monte Carlo rally to Toivonen

NZPA-AFP Monte Carlo

Henri Toivonen of Finland and Sergio Cresto of Italy, in a Lancia Delta S 4, were the provisional winners of the fifty-fourth Monte Carlo rally here yesterday. Toivonen, aged 29, repeating his father Pauli’s 1966 triumph in the famous event, finished 4min 4s clear of his compatriot world champions, Timo Salonen, and Seppo Harjanne, in a Peugeot 205 Turbo.

Audi Quattros took third and fourth places in the opening world championsip event. The experienced Hannu Mikkola completed a clean sweep of the top three places for Finnish drivers, when with Sweden’s Arne Hertz he brought home the leading Audi in a time of lOhr 18min 46s — 7mins 22s behind the winners.

West Germany’s Walter Rohrl and Christian Geistdorfer, who triumphed here in 1980, 1982, 1983 and 1984, finished in fourth place in the second Quattro, 9min 35s behind the leading Lancia. Peugeot’s other works 205 crews of the Frenchmen, Bruno Saby, and Jean Francois Fauchille, and the Finns, Juha Kankkunen and Juha Piironen, took fifth and sixth places ahead of the exciting Salvador Servia and Jorge Sabater of Spain In a privately-entered Lancia 037.

Toivonen, from Jyvaskyla, who began rallying in a Simca 1000 ten years ago, had always looked a likely winner of this year’s event. Having proved how competitive the new Lan-

cia Delta was going to be by winning Britain’s RAC rally in November, when the new machine made its world championship debut, Toivonen overcame a series of major, setbacks to triumph here. After emerging as rally leaders as early as the second stage of the “classification run” on Sunday, Toivonen’s chances of success suddenly slumped dramatically during an in-cident-packed “common-run” section, when his Lancia crashed into an oncoming spectator’s car on a road section between stages on Tuesday morning.

Lancia mechanics worked against the clock to repair the damage and Toivonen and Cresto, who were more seriously hurt in the crash than at first appeared (Toivonen complained of a painful hip and Cresto’s knee swelled to twice its normal size) needed painkillers to keep them going.

Their chances of success looked far from certain after they surrendered the rally lead to Salonen and Harjanne shortly before arriving in Monte Carlo at the end of the competition’s marathon third phase. A full night’s rest made all the difference, however.

Some spectacular drives on the final 834 km run, and especially through the famous Turini Pass (Toivonen set the fastest times on both runs through the 22.4 km stage) which was lined by tens of thousands of spectators, enabled the Lancia crew to recapture the lead. Once they were back in front, they never looked back.