Monte - Six of the best

Fill ya boots, fella. Just be sure they're waterproof and your socks are cosy. 🤗

This appeared in my timeline a few days back. Not sure it will end well if it happens.😬

After Fridays stages, Ogier is creaming it as expected,tight fight behind him though which is good.

Wankel, and anyone else unconvinced by the attractions of rallying, I offer this love letter to the sport for your viewing pleasure.

We must accept their are two things in life that are absolute Marmite, plus Marmite of course, Rallying and Revoslots, I love them both, hate Marmite.

As ever, this year's Monte consists of a lot of pretty stages to go 'aaah!' at while hoping for something interesting to happen. Some lovely driving, too, but the only thing standing between Ogier and the silverware is Pirelli's ability to produce self-destructing rubber.

WRC2 is pretty good, though.

I'm sort-of enjoying the luxury of watching on the telly-telly-bunkum-box without having to drag interesting quotes out of the drivers. Sort-of. Just annoyed that we're hearing the term 'pollution' creep back in to describe muck dragged out of the ditches. In the modern era, and after spending stupid money on going hybrid, complaining about cars leaving 'pollution' on the stage is just mindless.

Well, I sent a message to the commentators telling Becs to fine anyone speaking the dread word by making them bring in coffee and donuts every day in Sweden. I got a laughing cat emoji in reply. Let's see if it works...

I'd add a Matra Djet to those three.

driver#8 said:

Well, I sent a message to the commentators telling Becs to fine anyone speaking the dread word by making them bring in coffee and donuts every day in Sweden. I got a laughing cat emoji in reply. Let's see if it works...

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The other one is black top...!

Final four stages tomorrow, Seb has eased up at the front ,let Kalle halve his lead, Ott has been running all day with no power steering, watching the footage it's been a flat out blind.
Don't think this will go down as a classic Monte.
Talking Monte I'm looking forward to the Avant Marlboro Golf, soon. Ish.

Record ninth win for Ogier, excellent second place for Kalle.
Those ere Toyota's are going to take some stopping, they sound 8loody awful on the overun though.

Oh. I forgot to take a look.SSounds like I might not have missed a thriller.

Might see what I can see now, if only to hear the 'pollution' references.

Wankel Ickx said:

This appeared in my timeline a few days back. Not sure it will end well if it happens.😬

Click to expand...

I read a copy of Business F1 this week (had to shower several times afterwards), which has a piece going into the shenanigans at Aston which led to Vettel's dismissal. Basically, Lance Stroll was tired of his brand becoming a bandwagon for every passing social media cause, then his Saudi investors kicked up a fuss about their star driver being a hippy who was telling the world that the people paying him millions per year were in fact planet murderers.

Blindingly obvious, really.

Does the rally world need Vettel? Not especially. A nice low-profile approach and being keen to learn the sport, like Heikki Kovalainen is doing, might work. But only if he's capable of doing that rather than making the whole thing an exercise to promote litter picking and diversity.

Interesting gossip!

Please tell me you've made a model of #133.
Which is to say, please show us the model you made of....

Anyhoo, I gave the Monte a stab. I watched several videos on the Tube of You and after briefly being excited by the mad Pikes Peak-spec rear wings that for some reason I thought had passed into history and the simply mad spectacle of speed, narrow roads, twisty roads and big drops, I lost interest. Not the least because I saw Alpines were entered but seemingly not videoed. And I did look.

Sad times.

Also thought it a little amusing/tedious that the first vid' I watched was just of a gravel-voiced chap meandering amongst the crowds and complimenting them on their fires.

I followed the results, stage-by-stage, but focused on WRC2 and R-GT. I know Ogier won, but other than that I couldn't tell you anything about the 10 "leading entries". I've lost all interest.
Shame there isn't any decent coverage of WRC2, etc.

The Toyotas cantered off into the distance, then Elfyn suffered a Pirelli failure and lost a minute and Kalle smacked a wall and lost half a minute. Everyone else was losing lots of time anyway, the Hyundais were woeful and the M-Sports kept losing their power steering, so Ogier could potter along at his own pace.

The most amusing thing I discovered was that Christian Horner used to refer to Hyundai's new principal as 'Cyril Irritable'. Seems like life in Alzenau will be as fractious as usual, then...

"the bobblehatters", I like that.

I watched one official video and then assumed they'd not bother with the Alpines so why should I bother with their coverage?

Although the image quality is often poor it's true the bobblehatters (that's a keeper that deserves repeating) often had more dramatic footage.

Safety Nazis will surely come for this sport soon - I saw one 'hatter nearly run over as he attempted to help a car and kept shaking my head in disbelief at folk parking their campervans close to the outside of corners. Madness.

No 150 is a surprise.