Rally Portugal 1999

Rally Portugal has been criticized for not being able to control the enthusiastic crowds of spectators along the route. This year a lot of attention was put on the matter and the results were good. Many drivers reported that although there were a lot of spectators their behaviour was better than ever. There still is work to do, though, as the organizers had to cancel two stages on the second leg as there were simply too many people too close to the road. Both spectators and competitors suffer from cancellations of this sort.

Norwegian driver Petter Solberg was again replacing Thomas Raadstrom at Ford and Mitsubishi hired Marcus Gronholm from Peugeot to replace Freddy Loix who was still recovering from some bone fractures he got in his spectacular roll in the Safari. Skoda was back after their not-so-good debute in Monte Carlo, again with Armin Schwarz and Emil Triner.

The rally started, as is customary nowadays, with a single super special driven on Sunday. As a hint of things to come, the special was won by Colin McRae of Ford. The first leg started Monday morning on the very dusty roads around Porto, which were made very fast and hard by earlier rains. As always the roads were fastest for the crews driving behind the first ones on the road as the excess dust had been sweeped off the road by the first cars.

Colin McRae on the famous Fafe jumps (Photo by Ralph Hardwick/LAT /Ford)

Colin McRae didn't seem to need time to wake up, as he put himself firmly in the lead on the first two stages and held it all through the day, winning five of the day's nine stages. He did benefit from his starting position, but one has to wonder the speed of the new Ford Focus, considering that the car is still some 70kg overweight! Behind McRae Subaru's Richard Burns was battling with the Toyota duet of Sainz and Auriol. They all were within a few seconds, some 50 secs behind the leader. Behind them, Marcus Gronholm showed good speed in the Mitsubishi, a car totally unfamiliar to him. He was followed by Juha Kankkunen, Harri Rovanpera and Piero Liatti. Tommi Makinen was 9th, struggling all day with differential problems. Both Skodas retired with clutch problems but until that they were going fine, there has clearly been good development in the team.

On the second day Colin McRae, as the overnight leader, had to drive first on the road, and he had to work really hard to defend his position. He did that superbly and the Focus ran like clockwork; at the end of the day he was still leading by 30 secs. Behind McRae Carlos Sainz and Didier Auriol were having a competition of their own inside the Toyota Team. Sainz was leading his team-mate by 5 secs after the leg. Richard Burns dropped to 4th with a wrong tire choice in the morning. Tommi Makinen had a new transmission and was up to his usual speed, chasing the leaders. He was now 5th, 30 secs behind Burns. Too bad for him and the two Toyotas, the last two stages, over 40kms combined, were cancelled due to the excessive amount of spectators and also traffic problems on the road sections to and from the stages.

The day was particularily hard for Finnish drivers as Juha Kankkunen retired with an engine failure and Harri Rovanpera of Seat hit a rock damaging the suspension, with similar consequence. Marcus Gronholm, also a Finn, lost his brakes and soldiered without them for a couple of stages until his clutch failed and he too was listed under retirements. Piero Liatti rolled his Seat and was out of the rally, too.

Didier Auriol was really trying on the last day (Photo by TTE)

The final day consisted of 4 stages (60km) and making no errors Colin McRae didn't have difficulty in keeping others behind and taking a second win for the new Ford Focus in its 4th WRC event. Not a bad record at all! McRae took the last stages very carefully and the winning margin was finally only 12 secs. There were definitely no team orders at Toyota on the final day, as Didier Auriol did everything to catch his team-mate. On the last stage he almost rolled the car; he clipped the inside of a bank, went up on two wheels and then run up the bank the other side, not losing too much time, though. At the end Sainz beat Auriol by 4 seconds. Behind them Tommi Makinen was still trying hard to catch Burns, but he run out of stage kilometers and had to settle for 5th place, 9 secs behind Burns.

Bruno Thiry finished 6th with the third Subaru. He lost a lot of time in a roll on the second day. Seventh in the rally was Turkish driver Volan Isik with a privately entered Toyota Corolla WRC. F2 was won by Alister McRae in the Huyndai, so it definitely was party-time for the McRae family! Gr. N winner was Miguel Campos with a Mitsubishi. Petter Solberg finished 11th after flipping the Focus onto its side on the last stage.

Tommi Makinen still leads the championship, but Colin McRae has come within two points from him and also the Toyota drivers are in close pursuit. We have another great season of world rallying ahead of us, folks!