Category: Winter Trial Rally

Under grey skies we entered the Black Forest, where we encountered the first heavy snow cover.

Gorgeous landscape and great driving roads. Somewhat icy remnants on the road made for fingertip handling of the steering wheel to nurse Silverado downhill. We ran three regularities today and had a few misses which were partly recovered. The field was very close after yesterday, but today the last regularity seems to be keeping many people busy, as it’s somewhat quiet in the bar. Here’s a link to some video:

Winter Trial 2012 Test 1

We took off in 24th position, due to my mistake on the first test, but because the first day was not very challenging, the field was very close together. We had 5 minutes between number 1 and ourselves. In this rally damage is usually measured in hours in the end, so we plod away and hope to make fewer mistakes than others.

To avoid [...]

We have just arrived at our hotel in Valkenburg, The Netherlands, starting point of Winter Trial 2012. After a send off by local retailer The English Hatter in Laren, who sponsored our group with sweaters, we sped off towards the southern most tip of The Netherlands.

This year our group of friends is fielding a very diverse set of cars, including a Lancia Beta Monte Carlo, driven by Rene Middelweerd and Cooper Goei. Always like playing with an un-pinned hand grenade, the maintenance crew is already checking out the first niggles on the Lancia…. And we only done a 40 second test just now! I’m probably going to get T-boned by our friends for writing this, but it’s too nice an opportunity for a tease to pass up!

[...]

The above poster is the creative product of Pavel, our Czech photographer friend and the editing performed by our creative friend Vasco Ricardo from Portugal. Vasco is a graphics designer, heavily infected with the early 911 bug. The poster even has the pixel structure of large surface posters from the 70’s, the way the Factory issued them…

I met Vasco for the first time at R Gruppe Treffen three years ago, in San Luis Obispo. He had just completed a cross continental ride from New York, in the shotgun seat with his Irish friend Karl O’Donoghue. To say that Vasco was mesmerized by the sight and presence of so many gorgeous early 911s and their mad community of enthusiast-owners would be the understatement of the year!

We stayed in touch as Vasco joined R Gruppe and now was also part of our European Chapter. He has been flying the R Gruppe flag on the Iberian [...]