Sébastien Ogier, Thierry Neuville and Ott Tänak? They come and go. If you want reliable, look to Andrea Crugnola and that most dependable of Italian stalwarts Paolo Andreucci. Year-in-year-out, they’re among the cathedral’s congregation.
The cathedral? Monza. Italy’s cathedral of speed.
Three years ago the Monza Rally arrived into the World Rally Championship in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Seventeen events were ‘included’ on the WRC calendar in 2020.
Points were taken from Monte, Sweden and México, but then COVID came and stopped the world in its tracks. As a reminder, Chile, Argentina, Portugal, Kenya, Finland, New Zealand, Germany, GB, Japan and Belgium were all cancelled due to the pandemic. Estonia was drafted in, Turkey ran, Sardinia moved and Monza was invited to close the show.
It was a year like no other.
I’ll be honest, when I first heard the title would be decided somewhere between Parabolica and Lesmo, I thought it had to be April 1. How could that happen? Surely, it couldn’t.
But it did. And how wrong was I. For two years, the Monza Rally delivered a superb end to the world championship. Admittedly, year one was spiced up by a spellbinding battle between Elfyn Evans and Toyota team-mate Sébastien Ogier, but still, both events were absolute belters.
After a year’s absence, Monza Rally is back and underway on Friday. And, yep, Crugnola and Andreucci are both there, doing their bit to make up for the absence of the world championship.
It’s back based within the confines of the stunning Monza circuit – the days of heading out into the challenging lanes north of Bergamo were saved for the WRC.
The travails of the WRC pale into entirely understandable insignificance when you consider where the world was three years ago, but Monza Rally helped bring a smile to northern Italian faces who’d seen some of the darkest days earlier that year.
Is there a place for this week’s circuit-based event in the WRC? Absolutely. The atmosphere in Monza has to be experienced to be understood. It was fantastic. It was a rally as well as a show. It brought the people to the heart of the event and made rockstars of the drivers and co-drivers.
Yes, there were traffic hassles, some fairly unpredictable weather and some samey stages on track, but that was balanced by enthusiastic support, great organi\ation and the chance to hang out in one of the world’s most beautiful places for the week, while enjoying some of the finest pumpkin risotto in the history of time.
Monza back to the WRC? For sure.
But don’t forget, it’s happening anyway. Starting today.
