Sami Pajari and Robert Virves’ tie for WRC2 glory at the recent Acropolis Rally Greece was impressive – of that there can be no dispute.
But it’s not quite tying for an overall World Rally Championship win-impressive.
There are some stark, and obvious differences, between what unfurled in Greece to the events of the 1985 Ivory Coast Rally – although curiously both events were topped by a Finn driving a Toyota.
In the case of the Ivory Coast, Juha Kankkunen came out on top of a tiebreak with Toyota team-mate Björn Waldegård. The two Celica Twincam Turbos were over an hour and a half clear of third-placed Alain Ambrosino (Nissan 240RS).
“It was a road event only, there were no stages. [Instead] it was all time controls,” Fred Gallagher, who co-drove Kankkunen to victory, tells DirtFish.
“I actually have no idea [what] the numbers [were] but it said something in the regulations like TC25 to TC26 will be a tie decider. So whoever dropped a minute or two minutes less than the other guy was going to win.
“But.. yeah, I suppose almost 40 years after the fact, I think Juha and I professed not to know what the tie deciding rule was whenever the tie decider was decided upon.
“But in fact we did.”
Kankkunen (right) and Gallagher won both of the WRC's African events in 1985
It was Kankkunen’s second of 23 WRC wins and completed a clean sweep in Africa that season, after the eventual four-time world champion took his breakthrough win on the Safari that March.
Ivory Coast was a very different challenge to the Safari, but a similar approach was required to win.
“It was like Safari, but with much, much rougher roads, slower roads,” Gallagher recalls.
“The lodging wasn’t a patch on the stuff that you would find in Kenya in those days. The only thing was when you were on recce and you came to a hotel there was always a French restaurant in every town, it [Ivory Coast] being an old French colony, so you always had a good dinner and a good bottle of wine!
“But it was not the pleasure… you know, you didn’t dream of going back every year the way you did Safari in those days.
“The Safari that year we sort of looked at it and came up with this rationale that Shekhar Mehta was normally first, second, or third. And no offense to Shekhar, but Juha was a considerably quicker driver than Shekhar was. And the Toyota was a considerably quicker car than Shekhar’s Nissan.
“So the idea was for the first two, three days, we just shadowed Shekhar and ran with his pace, which we sort of did. We went from eighth at the end of the first rest halt to third, and then Shekhar went off the road. And by that time we sort of knew the pace to run at. And we carried that through to Ivory Coast.
A tactical approach was needed to win the Ivory Coast Rally
“You know, it was all very relaxed, which sounds ridiculous in a Group B car, winning by an hour and a half. But, you know, it wasn’t a stressy thing at all. And Henry Liddon was a sensational team manager. I mean, Henry knew Africa inside out and loved it. So a big part of the success was down to Henry.”
Toyota’s biggest threat in 1985 came from the Audi of Michèle Mouton, who made her one and only WRC start of the year in the Ivory Coast. But it was an eventful appearance to say the least – most famously for the speculation that Audi swapped cars in the night and gave Mouton team-mate Franz Braun’s sport quattro.
But Mouton also ran into strife on the pre-event recce.
“We, Juha and I, Björn and Hans Thorszelius and Michèle Mouton who was with Arne Hertz, we recced together and we were all in full Group B recce cars because this was back in the day when you used the real thing,” Gallagher explains.
“Michèle was running first on the road and we had a two-minute gap for dust or whatever. Juha and I were second and we recced at pretty much rally speeds in those days. And we came round the corner and there was a pretty written off Audi lying in the ditch on the right and Michèle had hit a railway train between the wheels.
“Björn was a wonderful bush mechanic and after a couple of hours he made the quattro drivable again but without a driver’s door, for example, and different stuff. And Michèle was too shocked to drive it, so Juha drove the Audi quattro with Arne Hertz. Björn went in front with Hans and made notes for all of us, and I drove the Toyota Celica, Twincam Turbo Group B, with Michèle Mouton as my co-driver. For about 200-250kms, most of it on gravel – and I’m not a driver!
L-R: Gallagher, Kankkunen, Waldegård and Thorszelius
“I mentioned this to her, I don’t know, a couple of years ago, but she was so shocked she has zero memory of it, doesn’t recall a thing about it. And then of course, that was the same event, remember, when Audi swapped cars in the night? And then withdrew, so it’s a big story rally.”
But as for the headline-grabbing tie for the win, Gallagher doesn’t revel in any personal satisfaction.
“It’s a shame in a way that we couldn’t actually have shared the win because both crews deserved to win,” he says. “It was a team victory.
“There were absolutely no hard feelings if it had been either way. We got on famously, the four of us. We shared everything. We always ate together. We drank together. We partied together. We traveled together. We just all got on.”
