STARS GATHER FOR RALLY T RA S MI ERA RUN
Champions join the trail on closed roads in northern spain
‘Hadfield and Schryver will drive a Chevron’ Ace pair will team up, below
Jimmy Mcrae, Juha Kankkunen and Antonio Zanini are among the stars gathering for the Rallye Festival Trasmiera on May 10-12 in the Cantabria region of northern Spain.
Mcrae reckons that a British version of the closed-road demonstration event could now be feasible. “I did it last year in an Opel Manta 400 and I think it is a fantastic event,” said Mcrae. “The crowds are just unbelievable and it’s a lot of fun. The stages are very nice. You can drive however you want to drive and that’s what is so good about it. Hopefully now we have closed roads we could have something like it here, which would be great.”
The event includes 165 cars up to first generation WRC cars, with 35 cars going from the UK via the event’s UK agent Gary Gee. The route covers around 60 miles of stages over three days, starting on Thursday evening and finishing on Saturday.
Kankkunen and his former co-driver Nicky Grist will be in their 1994 Toyota Celica, which has recently been restored by Warner Lewis.
“They charge one euro per person to go into the service park and last year they took 54,000 euros for charity,” said Gee. “They have fantastic cars and even the road sections are lined with people. You can go as fast or as slow as you want.”
Gee is taking his ex-works Talbot Lotus Sunbeam with Ian Grindrod as co-driver while other entries include spectacular Irish driver Frank Kelly in his Ford Escort Mk2.