Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 32 – Sofia to Timisoara – 618km

Anyone who thought things were about to settle down a touch now we had arrived in Europe would think again after today, a monster 618km journey that mostly took place on proper drivers’ roads. There were no endless highway runs, or long straight stretches of traffic free tarmac, the roads today demanded maximum concentration. This was transit, Jim, but not as we know it.

Even the run out of Sofia was a maze of small roads, save for the odd multi-lane boulevard. You had to trust the tulips, as some of the roads just didn’t feel that natural, but once through the endless suburbs, paved with broken asphalt, we were eventually out into the countryside, climbing some of the lower foothills of the Balkan Mountains and travelling the path of the Iskar River, through the Iskar Gorge. These were just the first of many twisty roads that would be navigated today, though meagre speed limits and lingering local drivers made progress slow at times.

These hillsides also offered up the roads for the first of two regularities. Both were Hillclimb’s, though there would be 100km between the pair of them. Nothing especially remarkable occurred on either of them, other than the fact that there were so many good performances, with perfect scores on the first reg from cars 61, 72 and 78, and aces on the second from 23 and 65. Indeed across the day, 15 crews would finish with time penalties in single digits, clearly enjoying the Hillclimb action.

With the regs despatched, we were only a third of the way through our day, with a border crossing and then 360km’s of travel through Romania. Thankfully, with such a long afternoon ahead, the border was quick and easy, with the only bureaucracy being a toll charge for crossing the bridge over the Danube. What followed this, was a dull concentration run along Romania’s clogged DN6 and DN56 arterial roads, which were inhabited by seemingly every HGV driver in Europe. These single carriageway roads were slow going, and patience was required, though often not a courtesy shown by the locals, who are clearly used to the truck traffic.

It was on one of these arterial routes that car 32’s day would come to a grinding halt, quite literally, when one of their wheels jettisoned itself from its mounting, leaving the Bentley sliding along the tarmac. Driver Peter Pollet said he first realised something was wrong when he was overtaken by his wheel, before the left rear dug into the asphalt and put an end to their day.

Car 73, the somewhat creased Celica of Keith West and Richard Haslam was also struggling with mechanical issues, and after some sweep intervention were running around at the back of the field, and in the end would pick up 72 minutes of penalty on the day, as well as, I’m told, having a few chats with local law enforcement, though you would have to ask Keith and Rich what the content of those conversations were…

Patrick Burke also had some difficulty to overcome with diff issues, as the Merc was losing fluid through a worn seal, though he would make it to the end of the day with minimal penalties considering.

Eventually the route did turn away from the main arterial roads, and a few hundred kilometres of fun driving opened up. The day’s final MTC had been amended to a remote one, so as to leave the last 170km’s of the day free of time pressures, allowing competitors to travel the roads at their own pace. This last run of the day was easily the best part of the leg, and I daresay some of the best roads of the event. It was intense, if you wanted to push, and was one of those runs where you could really get into the zone. The local traffic wasn’t as prevalent as before, and part of the fun was maintaining the pace as the road followed the undulating contours of the land, through forests and gorges, and up and over hills.

Midway through this run the rally travelled through the mountain town of Resita, with its open-air Locomotive Museum, chronicling the towns historic locomotive factory, which if anyone had time was well worth a walk around. There was history on display throughout the afternoon, with many historic churches and buildings, and these were especially prevalent in our home for the evening, in the city of Timisoara, with its Secessionist architecture and baroque buildings. We weren’t staying anywhere quite so extravagant, but the carpark of the hotel attracted many of the locals, who came to have a nose at the strange cavalcade of vehicles paddocked in this non-descript area of the town.

After so many good performances there had been zero movement on the leaderboard, with everyone holding station and the gaps between them almost exactly as they had been at the beginning of the day. I daresay that won’t continue to be the case over the next couple of days…

Syd