Tag: Porsche

Today we drove from Slovenia to Austria and what a gorgeous day it was! Team Twinspark had an early start and we left at the head of the field from Maribor in Slovenia at 7.30 for an 11 hour day of fun in the snow. This early start proved to be a boon as the roads were covered with fresh snow, untouched by the heavy traffic of 100 rally cars. Driving in the middle of such a field you tend to get stuck in traffic when cars can’t reach the summit of a hill and roads are so narrow that overtaking is out of the question…

The sun was out and we could not have asked for nicer panoramic views, nor prettier landscape. The blue sky contrasted with the pure white snow, that we ploughed through for hours at serious speeds. We crossed the Slovenian-Austrian border around 9 AM and the main road was [...]

Today we feature our friends Fer and Gerard who are at the table with us here in Maribor, Slovenia. They drive a restored 1973 2.4S Targa with the roof open all day long. Today was 10C below 0, but both got out of the car completely sunburned, due to the altitude we drive at. You find their picture, with their car appended to this posting. These diehards alternate driving and navigation each day, which makes for interesting dinner talk, not to be repeated on this blog…

Driving on some of Slovenia’s smallest mountain roads, we saw many incidents, due to cars getting off the road, in one case even in to a ravine! But Porsches are built to last, so that car was pulled out of the 15 meter deep ravine and is supposed to arrive back from the evening loop any time now. Imagine…

Lots of time is spent in this event, saving [...]

At 3 minutes flat we tackled this challenging and slippery road course. Little did we know that the organisors had sprayed water in some of the corners, which had obviously frozen and caught us unawares… Despite this error we put down a competitive time and had a blast. We were interviewed for television after the finish, so perhaps you’ll see some shots from outside the car on Dutch channels…

The connecting legs and regularities were challenging due to mixed surface conditions: asphalt, wet, ice, snow, all following in rapid succession, leading to many “human ABS” footwork.

Story of the day to me was the situation Ron and Birgit Lopez Cardoso went through today in their BMW 2002. Somewhere along the line the throttle bar played u an Ron had it clean in his hands, yet managed to finish! Here’s a shot of one of Holland’s leading historic Rally couples: