Due west of Gap, not long after six on Sunday morning, the Monte bared its teeth. As the inky black depths of a cloudless, horribly-early morning cracked, day began to break. And it revealed round one in its full and fearsome glory.
The first few days of the season were, undoubtedly, exciting. There were fireworks on Thursday night, a world champion tricked twice by a downhill right-hander on Friday. Saturday was all about Estonia and a stunning demonstration of what Ott Tänak remains capable of when the stars align and his Hankooked Hyundai follows his lead.
But, if we’re honest, it wasn’t very Monte. It was all a bit chilly-muddy Sanremo.
Then came Sunday and the Hautes-Alpes did their thing. In the words of 10-time winner Sébastien Ogier, the Monte Carlo Rally revealed its true livery. Somebody switched the lights on and the true, brutal beauty of this place was uncovered.
The final day of this year’s event was an absolute, old-school, studs-versus-slicks cracker.
WRC TV’s Mike Chen called it.
“It’s going to snow tonight,” he reckoned on Saturday afternoon. Order now, Chenny. It’s 12 degrees. Snow will not be pictured.
“I’m just telling you what I’ve been told,” he smiled with a shrug.
Snow. Snow?
Admittedly, as midnight approached on Saturday, it had started raining. But it was still way too warm to turn wet to white. Four and a bit hours later, coffee ground, kit and car packed and there was no doubting it was damp. But it was still half a degree north of freezing.
Picking our way towards La Bâtie-Vieille, the village a mile or so short of the start of Sunday morning’s opener and there was more than the odd patch of ice around. Then, as five ticked across to six, the temperature started to drop. Not dramatically, but enough.
As dawn broke over the mountains, anticipation rose
Waiting at the start of the 8.7-mile Avançon-Notre-Dame-du-Laus, anticipation was beginning to build. Had it snowed? Not here it hadn’t. What about the Col de Turini? Who knew?
The webcam on the top revealed little: it was as dark there as it was here.
Grégoire Munster’s Ford came into earshot and the excitement level went up a notch. Even though we were still more than two miles from the start, fans were pouring down the road in the hope of a stage-side slot to watch the action. Torches danced across the fields, picking out trees and farm outbuildings. Then Munster turned the Puma down our road, flicked on the spot, built some revs and dropped the clutch. He lit the place up in every sense of the world.
Spectators took a step back as daylight flew by.
Stopping to remove blanking plates and go through the whole pre-stage routine, Munster instinctively, scuffed his foot across the surface. Ice.
Within minutes more and more cars arrived. The crews’ habits in preparation for the stage start never change: tire pressures have to be done, the first page of notes read. But this was different. Head torches in place, the co-drivers were more tentative in their steps around the car and the drivers’ warm-up routine more restricted, with slick race boots offering little or no resistance against this particular corner of mother earth.
Early-morning stages plus black ice equals Monte magic
Who was on what? Studs for the first few, but then the odd crossed slick was thrown into the mix. This was the Monte at its absolute best, bringing the need for such abstract compromise from corner to corner. A studded Hankook i*cept SR20 on the left-front would mean solid, dependable turn-in to right-handers. The soft Ventus Z215 sitting opposite across the axle would make left-handers interesting in the extreme.
The grip differential across the car would be bigger here than anywhere else on the calendar. It took a moment, as it always does on the Monte, to compute what these drivers were undertaking. But this is the game. The first stage was icy, the second stage much less so and then came Turini and who knew what was going on at 1600 meters.
Tires pondered at half-five in the morning would still be in play when the cars began the climb out of La Bollène-Vesubie more than six hours later.
But the here and now was all about who had what. Talking to the crews was different this morning. There were no long, in-depth conversations about what was to come, there were just snatched moments between bouts of indecision and borderline anxiety.
Moments before pulling on his balaclava and climbing into his car, Takamoto Katsuta ran over to Thierry Neuville’s Hyundai and stared at the front, then the rear. Full studs. Taka was on a cross. In an instant, you could see the doubt in his mind. Had he got it wrong?
Studs versus slicks: the eternal Monte conundrum
By now, Munster and his M-Sport team-mate Josh McErlean were very much stage-bound. Warming the studded tire isn’t really a thing, but brakes still needed the energy, the noise from the cars boomed off the outbuildings and across the fields.
The depths of night had now given way to daybreak. The mountains had started to show themselves, backlit by nature with the most dramatic bluish tinge. And still the temperature fell.
Ogier’s arrival at the back of the Rally1 pack was telling. He stayed in the car, watching those ahead of him as they tip-toed into this increasingly chilly stage. The gravel-note crews had been down this road three hours earlier; conditions had changed dramatically since then. Their additions to the pace notes would need to be taken with a pinch of salt. More than a pinch.
The Monte master made the most of any last-minute insight he could gather
A mile or so in and Taka’s off. His Yaris letting go on an innocuous-looking right. He’s parked in somebody’s hedge, the car looking undamaged, but it’s not moving. Even standing up on the stretch of Tarmac leading into that corner is an achievement. A few miles further up the road and Sami Pajari’s taken out the side of a bridge, cleared a river and dropped the sister car on the bank on the other side.
Still Ogier sits. Impassive. Ready. Confident.
Then he goes. The sun’s up, the mountains have been painted and the Monte’s back, for the final day, in its perfect livery.
What a day Sunday was.