Blog

After an exciting morning running regularities through Western Slovenia, we all made it to the finish line in Trieste, where we were greeted by organiser Bart Rietbergen and his wife Jolijn, I can honestly say that I have never experienced the kind of cold we have here at the moment. The wind is blowing from the East over the Adriatic at hurricane speeds and the wind chill factor must be minus 25C!

This morning’s roads had more holes than a Gruyere cheese. Anything loose in the car danced around as though gravity had dropped to Moon levels. Should you need to recover from a wrong turn early in a stage, doing 90km on these twisties shows you where the weakness in the car is. None were found.

We have yet to find out the official results of the rally, but we will not have surpassed the middle of the pack by much this year. The atmosphere amongst our group of friends is unique and something to relive regularly and what makes this event so attractive for me. Telling each other war stories of the day and exchanging experiences with the cars and how they behave on these slippery roads is what petrol heads enjoy.

Some of the roads today were so dusty that they reminded me of our friend Hayden’s adventure in the savannah during London to Cape Town. Clouds of dust were spraying from beneath the cars. Our friend Lode Schaeffer took a photo while driving behind Silverado, which I’ll append to this message later.

Right now we’re preparing for the awards dinner and getting into our dinner jackets for the traditional evening of reminiscence on the event. More tomorrow where we’ll share the final results.

Many thanks to the marshals, who made the event possible in this bitterly cold climate!