The 2021 World Rally Championship season has successfully made it to day one, and it’s a short one at that as local curfews mean action can only take place after the hour hand on the Casino de Monte-Carlo’s clock has gone past six in the morning and before it gets round to six again in the evening.
Running us through the two stages that kick off the 2021 action on the Monte Carlo Rally is Alex Kihurani, co-driver to Sean Johnston in WRC2.
Anything could happen on the first 25.68 miles of competition, and the DirtFish duo think Thursday could be packing in the toughest stage of them all.
SS1 Saint-Disdier – Corps (12.78 miles)
Stage one was previously run in 2019. It starts off quite flat and fast with a whole bunch of junctions, it’s almost like a German rally. There’s a full kilometer straight with fields on both sides and then square junctions before a fast, flowing, double-width section. You go up the hill at the end, make a right that tightens where Andreas Mikkelsen took his wheel off in 2019. It’s quite a wide and fast opening to the rally.
SS2 Saint-Maurice – Saint-Bonnet (12.90 miles)
We think this is the trickiest stage of the rally. It starts off on a double-wide main road but after 800 meters you turn right over a bridge and then you start going through a neighborhood. It has snow banks and there’s water flowing everywhere and lots of surface changes. You pass through a load of towns with tight hairpins and speed bumps, it’s definitely the most difficult stage to make notes for with lots of different profiles.
