Rally Portugal 1997

Rally Portugal official pages.

Portugal was the venue of the third round of the World Rally Championship this year. Apart from the works drivers who do the full season, Mitsubishi had Richard Burns to back up the team's effort with the Carisma GT, and as the rally is driven on gravel roads, Subaru's second driver was again Kenneth Eriksson. The top Portuguese driver Rui Madeira also started with a gr. A Subaru.Toyota Team Belgium equipped a Celica for the young Belgian future star Freddy Loix and Toyota Finland brought one for Marcus Gronholm.

With this lineup the rally started on Sunday evening with a single super special driven in the 'home town' of the event, Figueira da Foz. Colin McRae and Carlos Sainz were fastest, but in the end that came to nothing as the stage was cancelled. The organisers managed to damage the brake system of Tommi Makinen's Mitsubishi with their weighing equipment and he had to drive the stage without brakes. As this was purely the organisers' fault, the whole stage had to be cancelled.

The first day of rallying was a long, tedious and dusty one. The drivers started at 5.30 am and the finish was at 11.20 pm. And already at noon two of the works drivers were out. First to go, though, was Marcus Gronholm, who drove off the road on the foggy first stage of the day. On the second stage Ford's Carlos Sainz developed transmission problems which led to an early retirement from third position on SS 5.

Colin McRae had been the strongest starter and was leading after five special stages, but on SS 6 he spinned and lost three minutes. He had been experiencing engine misfire and just before the stage finish the engine stopped and he couldn't get the car restarted. Pushing the car and advice from the service didn't help and Colin was out.

The field was now open for the battle of the Scandinavians to commence. After SS 6 Kenneth Eriksson was 14 seconds in front of Tommi Makinen, but the Finn was charging, too. On SS 9 Makinen took the lead, but had some tire problems on SS 11, so at the end of the day Eriksson was again leading by 14 secs. The leaders were followed by Loix, Burns, Madeira and Schwarz who had lost time in an off earlier.

Kenneth Eriksson (www.rallysport.com)

On the next day Makinen's pace was simply too much for the Swede. Makinen was fastest on all of the day's nine stages and took the lead on the 5th stage of the day, SS18. his team mate Richard Burns retired with a drvetrain problem on SS16.

The race was decided on the last stage of the evening, the 22 kilometre Viseu, driven in the dark. The engine of Eriksson's Subaru mysteriously died much like Colin McRae's had done previously. The team announced that the reasons of the break-downs were not connected, though.

Rui Madeira had rolled on the previous stage, losing 20 minutes, so behind Makinen was now Freddy Loix, followed by Ford's Armin Schwarz and Gregoire de Mevius, also sporting a Ford Escort.

The last day still contained 9 stages but Makinen cruised through with no problems apart from the organizers doing another error, this time with the zero-car, which should come through the stages 10 minutes before the first competitor. On one of the stages the zero-car was so late that Makinen caught up to it and had to drive behind it in the dust. This caused dangerous situations as spectators, not aware of Makinen being so close, jumped on the road after the zero-car had gone by.

Tommi Makinen flying high on the famous jumps (www.rallysport.com)

Anyway, Tommi Makinen and co-pilot Seppo Harjanne took their first victory after Australia last year. The much needed win put them back in the top of the standings. 'Fast Freddy' Loix did another magnificent drive, giving another hint that he might be the star of tomorrow. He already has a contract with Toyota for next year. The new WRC Corolla, by the way, is to be introduced in San Remo in October.

Armin Schwarz was third in Portugal after his early troubles. Behind him came the privateers, led by Belgian Gregoire de Mevius. Group N production saloons were won by Gustavo Trelles and F2 front drive class by Colin's brother, Alister McRae.

Rally Portugal 1997 results:

Championship standings

Next event: Catalunya (Apr 13 - 16).