Syd Stelvio – Gaucho Trail Day 4: Chapeco to Foz do Iguacu – 447km

Day four of the Gaucho was born under clear skies, in stark contrast to the previous days weather. The sun was shining, and the atmosphere was fresh, the kind of freshness that only comes after a storm. Today was to be the final full day of rallying in Brazil, with three regularities dotted across a 467km route.

There was an optimism in the air, buoyed by the return of the Pohl’s, and their trio of Mercs, after a new engine had been fitted into Niklas Pohl and Nathalie Pohl’s 220 Seb. They would be first out onto the road, as we left Chapeco and headed towards the first regularity, which was a short run between the fields on the maroon dirt tracks that cut through the farmland in this part of Brazil. There was still evidence of the rains, with swollen rivers and streams, and the tracks were soft in places, but the green fields of corn crops that stretched to the horizon shone like an emerald under the sun.

There would be opportunities to get lost today, with navigators needing to keep their eyes peeled to ensure they knew exactly where they were in relation to the road book. Several went for detours on the first reg, including Patrick and Pam Watts, who slotted right at a junction between the corn, when they should have gone left, and this time there were no Porsches in sight. They weren’t the only ones to fall foul of this particular part of the reg, and the tyre tracks at the crime scene pointed to more than a few cars making last minute changes of direction in the dirt, as they realised their errors. The reward for going the right way, other than minimising debt to the timekeeper, was a wonderful view across rolling hills, as the track burst out into the open atop a peak, before descending back into the valley floor and between the corn stalks again.

Afterall, what goes up must come down, and that was certainly the case for the overnight rally leaders, the Dippie’s, who suffered on reg number one, picking up maximum minute penalties at both timing points, meaning they would almost certainly be rescinding their lead. They were in good company though, with 14 other crews also totting up two minutes across the tricky reg. Nobody managed a perfect score, but Tommy Dreelan and George Barrack came close, losing just a second over the reg in their green Chevy, as they continued to fight back after their mechanical issues on day two.

An hour down the road a second regularity would close out the morning, as the landscape continued to impress. A long convoy of cars had formed on the run towards this particular section, and the competitors chased one another on the entertaining roads that hugged the undulating landscape, providing plenty of enjoyment – or at least they did when you could find a decent gap between heavy goods vehicles! Reg two would run in a similar fashion, between the fields and up and over the hills on a lively dirt track that proved to be a bit of a toboggan run towards the end of the section. It was much tighter in the results than reg one had been, with good scores being posted across the field, though nobody quite managed a perfect run. Two cars did come close, with both Peter and Louise Moreton, and Franc Höfermann-Kiefer and Christian von Sanden losing only a second.

The third reg of the day took the cars onto cobbles, a change from the dirt tracks we had experienced so far during the day’s competitive sections, though the surface would eventually change back to the deep, red earth we have gotten used to. Just like reg two, there was to be some tight competition between the crews, and just like reg one, some cars would suffer some navigational disasters. One junction in particular saw several cars shoot straight on, including Italian crew Federico Grom and Filippo Basolo, in their tidy Fiat 124, though they did well to recover and only lost 5 seconds total over the reg.

Slightly less quick to retrace their steps were Jonathan and Karen Turner, though their mistake wasn’t to overshoot the slot, rather they got a touch over-excited and turned early, ending up in a dead end in a farmyard. JT then had to bend the laws of physics whilst overtaking some agricultural traffic, on a track that definitely wasn’t wide enough to accommodate the tanker truck and his Mercedes. They would wrong slot again later on in the reg and picked up a maximum score by the end of it, in a perfect display of getting their money’s worth out of the section.

Elsewhere, plaudits must go to Nigel Dowding and Mary Antcliff, who aced the reg in the 1934 Aston Martin, putting their Magneto issues behind them, a problem that they think they have narrowed down to poor fuel, exacerbated by the heat. Across the entire day though, Friedrich Müller and Robert Huber would do the best, totting up just seven seconds of penalty, jumping up into sixth place overall, whilst the number one spot in the table was now in the hands of Nigel and Sally Woof, at the head of a Datsun top three. Leading the vintage cars, and so first overall, are Richard Walker and Faith Douglas, despite being one of the crews to pick up maximum penalty on the days first reg.

A long run into the evening’s hotel followed, of some two hours or more, and for those nearer to the back of the day, the journey was to get even longer as an accident on the road caused miles and miles of tailbacks. For those of us on the wrong side of the accident, there was almost an hour of sitting stationary, with many local people in the jam getting out of their cars and going to look at the odd collection of filthy classic rally cars that had appeared in the queue alongside them. Eventually one or two brave motorists opted to head for the dirt tracks that ran along the fields alongside the main road, with mixed success it must be said. Several locals in saloons had managed to get themselves beached in the slurry of tracks that were still sodden from the regions rain. Luckily, the rally cars that tried it all managed to keep moving, and a lot of us managed to skip around the accident and get on the way again.

The upside of the delay was that as the evenings halt came into site, we experienced a wonderful run across the dirt tracks between the fields as the sun set. It was an ethereal experience, as the dirt wakes of the cars smouldered in the low sun, refracting the last beams of orange light as on the horizon our solar systems star became a giant red disc as it dropped out of sight, and the sky itself turned scarlet and pink. If this was to be the curtain dropping on our time in Brazil, it perhaps couldn’t have had a more theatrical ending.

Syd.