North of Braga, just south of the Spanish border, the guard was changing. Not that anybody knew it at the time. Why would they? How could they? Five wins, back-to-back. If he started, he won. The Finn was flying.
Ari Vatanen shook his head. No, he hadn’t made a mistake. He’d made two mistakes on the 1985 Rally Portugal.
The Tuupovaara driver’s extraordinary run of victories aboard Peugeot’s 205 T16 was done. An unbroken sequence from Finland, through Sanremo, the RAC, Monte Carlo and Sweden bridging the 1984 and ’85 seasons was at an end.
Staring at a forlorn 205 slouched down on its right-rear with a broken wheel tucked up under the car, AV explained the sequence of events which would revise the balance of Finnish power within the French team.
“I was 13 seconds behind Walter [Röhrl],” he said. “I decided not to take the reinforced tire. I wanted more speed. We got a right-rear puncture not far from the start [of SS21]. It was so rough. I decided not to change.
“At the end of the stage, we put the new tire and continued.”
Three stages later, the suspension collapsed. Again, Vatanen pressed on. The risk was calculated. If he stopped and beckoned Peugeot’s heli-bound flying support team to change the corner, he would lose between 10 and 15 minutes.
The sparks grew bigger and brighter as the Peugeot’s corner was gradually worn away. Until it stopped. Chopper inbound, mechanics deployed and the car fired up, but wouldn’t run. The vibration had knocked the ignition sensor off the flywheel.
Try as the might, Peugeot's roadside assistance couldn't rescue Vatanen's unraveling Rally Portugal from disaster
“It was my mistake,” he said. “I should have taken the stronger tire. And I should have stopped when the suspension failed.”
Peugeot’s grip on the World Rally Championship had weakened, but this team was about two Finns. Step forward Timo Salonen.
Driving for Datsun and Nissan through the early part of his career, Salonen was still short on experience of the rocketship-like acceleration and grip of the 205 – especially compared with the relatively agricultural 240RS he spent the last two seasons in.
A pair of third-placed podiums in Monte Carlo and Sweden had given him mileage and built his confidence. His first job in Portugal was to despatch Miki Biasion’s Jolly Club-run Lancia 037. The Italian led on the Tarmac down south, but was powerless to keep the four-wheel drive cars behind when the going got loose.
Salonen got by, but immediately hit trouble when the steering failed. To make matters worse, the heli wasn’t close enough and the chase car stuck in traffic. Carrying a replacement rack and associated spares, the mechanics ran through the streets to broken 205. They made it. They were still in and still second… but six minutes behind Röhrl’s flying Audi Sport quattro.
Röhrl was on sensational form five years on from that legendary 1980 Rally of Portugal where he’d dominated the Arganil stage to beat everybody through the fog-bound 30-miler by four minutes.
Few expected Seppo Harjanne to be holding up a first place finger on Sunday – Röhrl and the quattro appeared too strong to usurp
This time, Arganil was far from friendly on the final morning. A split front differential casing lost its oil and sent the quattro into rear-wheel drive only. Salonen was through and into the lead. Worse still, a puncture on the second run of Arganil allowed Biasion back up to second.
Ahead of the final day, all bets were off. The German pairing of Röhrl and the Audi had this one in their pocket.
“Arganil. Something always happens in Arganil,” said Salonen at the finish.
He wasn’t wrong. He was the winner.
And from there the bespectacled Finn went on to win four of the next six rallies he competed on, lifting his first and only world title. Vatanen retired from four of the following five rallies, the last one being the spectacular crash in Argentina which ruled him out of the sport for more than a year and almost claimed his life.
