December is perhaps the most difficult month of the year for rally fans.
With the World Rally Championship season over there’s no action to feast on, and we only have but one thing to look forward to.
No, not the Christmas ham. Monte.
January’s Monte Carlo Rally is thankfully never too far away, and thoughts of watching the annual battle of man and machine vs the snow-lined stages and icy road surfaces is enough to warm a WRC fan’s heart through the long winter.
But there’s another classic WRC event which was capable of producing unpredictably Monte-like conditions, and bizarrely this rally took place in the summer.
Well, the northern hemisphere summer that is.
I’m talking of course about the much missed Rally Argentina, which was traditionally held in the middle of the South American winter before moving to an earlier slot on the WRC calendar after the 2005 edition.
And in that final mid-winter test, the famous El Condor stage threw-up snow and ice on cue, giving the drivers an even greater challenge on what was already one of the most demanding stages in the world of rallying.
So, in honor of a rally which gave the WRC’s finest the chills when they were probably ready for a European beach holiday, this edition of Girardo’s picture of the week is dedicated to those iconic roads in the Traslasierra mountains.
Chris Atkinson can be seen here snaking his Subaru through the snowy boulders en route to the road’s summit at a breathtaking 2100 meters above sea level.
Rally Argentina in the winter was a unique challenge, perhaps best summed up by 2005 event winner Sébastien Loeb as he set a new record time on El Condor’s slippy slopes.
“It’s a bit like Monte Carlo on gravel!”
