Sébastien Ogier, Thierry Neuville, Esapekka Lappi and DirtFish are all in complete agreement. Totally aligned. Friday morning’s opener is going to be some way to wake up.
New for this year, the Tantariles 20RIS is – as the name suggests – part of the celebration of two decades (or 19 years, as it actually is) of World Rally Championship action on the Italian island. What an odd way of celebrating…
It’s like celebrating the invention of milk chocolate by making everybody eat dark chocolate which, as we all know, is horrible.
When drivers single a stage out for a post-recce focus, Team DirtFish is all ears. And this time it was for very good reason.
The first stage of the Friday loop is just bananas. I know, I know, you’ve heard it all before. But this time it really is.
First of all, let’s hear what the men who matter had to say.
Ogier said: “Stage two will be very rough and very challenging. It’s only 10km but already a big challenge, so I’m not so sure what to expect about the weekend.”
Neuville added: “It’s a completely new stage which we have never done. It’s a very challenging stage to kick off the rally, very narrow.”
The typically super-cool EP added simply: “Yeah, it’s actually quite tricky.”
Super-cool and the master of understatement.
To get to the start you thread your way through the narrow streets of Padru, leaving the town’s Blues Café and a thoroughly decent cup of coffee behind you, and take the single-track south. Out of town, you start to climb. And climb. And climb.
The DirtFish Peugeot 3008 managed. Just. We had to take a couple of runs at some of the hills and spent a wee while castigating the lack of a stick shift as we sought to slip the clutch and find a bit more traction rather than sliding backwards with wheels spinning.
All with an increasingly monstruous drop just to the left.
Our efforts were, however, put into context by the rider of a big Harley with what looked like track day tires on. Pulling over to take in and capture the view, Harley man wheeled his way by on what looked like a Sunday run.
As we prepared to move off towards the start, the motorbikes made their way back down the stage. They’re reached their Everest. It was too much. Time to deliver 3008.
And she did. Only once did we have to reverse the front-wheel drive Lion-badged beast up a hill.
Off the start and through a couple of hairpins, SS2 looks OK. For the first half-mile, it looks well graded and the sort of surface you could really push on.
Maybe the organizer had got it wrong. Maybe the stage start was in the wrong place.
Over a crest, everything falls into place. The surface roughens as the road goes steep downhill into a hairpin right with a proper drop on the outside. Trying to get a Rally1 car slowed down for that hairpin will be interesting.
Again, there’s a steep uphill which I wonder if we’ll see the top of. We do. Hairpin and hairpin and then fast again.
Reaching the halfway point and the full force of this stage hits you. The road narrows and starts throwing washaway formed bumps at you. And it’s wet. Like deep-puddle wet.
Holding on through that middle section will be an achievement in itself. The cars are going to be everywhere – which is going to be interesting on a road which is… well, it’s just a smidge narrower than the cars themselves!
Crest. Take off? Fly? Leave your troubles behind? Not likely. You’d likely land into a massive puddle/small and localized lake in the middle of bumps which are ready, willing and able to pick you and your motor up and throw to the boonies.
The notes for this stage must go on and on and on. Every corner there’s a rock, something killing the line or another hazard.
And then as the finish nears, it opens up and gets quicker for a moment or two, before the madness is back, hurling cars feet into the air as they seek to set a course down a road made for horses, sheep and possibly goats.
What’s going to happen? Lord alone knows. It’s quite possible there will be chaos, with the potential for the stage being stopped if a car slews in the wrong direction in one of the narrower sections.
It’s a place which presents huge opportunity. The risk is massive in terms of punctures on the first stage in a loop, but the reward could be huge too. If anybody does set their car on the door handles here and they make the stage end, they have every right to expect a big, big lead.
We might have said this before, but we’ll say it again (and again): if you watch one stage this weekend, make it this one. Yes, the 30-mile Monte Lerno run will be entertaining and air-filled over Micky’s Jump, but SS2 (repeated as SS5) is going to be the one where everything (and possibly nothing…) will happen.
