It’s all change at the Monza Rally as the cars head into the mountains for day two of the World Rally Championship finale.
And though there’s no certainty about the conditions that will meet the crews when they get there, you can be certain about the nature of the roads they’ll face thanks to David Evans’ stage guide.
SS7/10 Selvino (16.39 miles)
Now we’re talking. Having broken free from the circuit’s perimeter roads, the final round of the World Rally Championship moves back into its natural habitat. The mountain roads.
North-east of Milan is Bergamo and north-east of Bergamo is Selvino, the venue for the opening stage of the loop.
Climbing to around 4000ft, there’s going to be very much a Monte Carlo Rally feel to this one and the loop’s other two stages to the west.
Not far off the start of the rally’s longest test, 15 hairpins ratchet the cars up the side of the mountain quickly. The road through these corners is wide, wide enough to offer a variety of lines – some of which could be hugely spectacular if there’s lots of snow and ice around and a driver has gambled tire choice…
While the wide (SP36) road continues into Selvino, the stage heads towards Salmezza on something a good bit narrower. This section is quick, but interspersed with the odd hairpin and deceptive corner. Seven more hairpins have the cars tearing through Sambusita, bound for a junction with the SP28 in Molino. Turn left and enjoy a bit more width before turning right onto a smaller section of road for a few more switchbacks (had to find another word for hairpin!), then it’s left onto the SP31, which is wider again, and up through a faster section to the finish.
SS8/11 Gerosa (7.02 miles)
Good and precise pacenotes are vital on every meter of every stage, but even more so, according to two-time world champion co-driver Tiziano Siviero, when it comes to this test. Siviero is the man responsible for these cars being on these particular roads today and the Italian who once guided Miki Biasion through the world’s best stages reckons there are four key sections in here where drivers can easily ship time if their notes are anything other than perfect.
A stage of two halves, with Gerosa splitting them. Before the village the cars are running on Strada Provinciale 24, a double-width section of road which is nice, fast and reasonably predictable – albeit with a couple of hairpins adding to the ascent. But where the SP24 hairpins around to the left, the cars dive off and onto via Roma, a narrower road which takes them out and into the trees. From there, it’s still quick, but a bit more nadgery with surface changes – and the road flattens off a little bit towards the finish just north of Berbenno.
SS9/12 Costa Valle Imagna (13.75 miles)
The Gerosa (SS8/11) test could fairly accurately be described as the rose between two potentially thorny mountain stages. Selvino’s a proper wake-up call while Costa Valle Imagna offers a sting in the loop’s tail.
Not used since the 1980s, this one starts out of Sant’Omoborno Terme where the road twists and turns its way up to the top of the pass (at 4400ft) in Valcava.
Brief lunch-like interlude here… Ristorante pizzeria Da Fausto well worth a visit and, in another time, worth entertaining calzone as the cars rocket past just up the road – not this time though, not on a no-spectator event.
And from there it’s downhill to the finish. And pretty steep downhill, through the charming village of San Marco. Watching the cars coming through the houses in San Marco would be an absolute treat – this is what rallying does better than any other sport in the world. It puts cars that look and perform like they’ve come from another world on the same street as the number 22 bus which runs the good folk of neighboring villages Tegiloa or Ca Bonasco to the Chiesa di San Marco every Sunday morning.
It’s hairpin central into the finish in Torre De’ Busi, by which point brakes and tires will be pretty much baked and basted.
Stage conditions on SS9 on Friday afternoon. Photo: RallyLink
SS13 Grand Prix (6.41 miles)
The final stage of the day is much more straightforward than the rest of the weekend’s circuit stages and involves a run around the old circuit loop (clockwise) for the first ‘lap’. Back onto the start/finish straight and the crews then move onto the Grand Prix track and, get, this, they do the whole lap in the right direction. The first chicane is just that!
The potential for any big long snowy, sleety drifts around Parabolica is spoiled by the need to negotiate a couple of chicanes, but otherwise this one is comfortably the clearest of the circuit stages from a navigational – and stage description – perspective.
