Syd Stelvio Peking to Paris 25 - Day 36 – Egerkingen to Dijon – 307km

Someone reminded me that today was Saturday, which was a novelty after spending the last few weeks marking dates by day number alone. It may have been Saturday for the rest of the world, but for those of us on the Peking to Paris rally it was day 36 of 37. The penultimate day of this incredible adventure, and the final day of meaningful competition.

It is also exactly five weeks since we departed Beijing, a sentence that in itself is an amazing thing to say, and an incredible achievement – regardless of your position in the leaderboard. There aren’t many people that can say they have driven from Beijing to France, and all of us should keep that in mind when assessing how the rally has gone.

It is a difficult thing now keeping one’s mind on the job at hand, with the finish so close. It isn’t just the thought of crossing the line either, but also the knowledge that after so long away from home, it will soon be time to be reunited with loved ones, and this will surely be the greatest prize of all.

But there were two final competition sections to tick off first. A pair of fairly simple regularities on a 307 km run to Dijon, a mercifully short day after some of the monsters that have been tackled over the past five weeks, not least the trawl through the Alps on Day 35.

Five weeks, let that sink in. Twelve countries (including a blink-and-you’ll miss it dip into Germany), twelve border crossings and fourteen-and-a-half-thousand-kilometres across deserts and mountains, from Asia to Europe across the biggest continuous land mass in the world.

This will be the final time I will write to you on this trip, the end is in sight, and words alone cannot articulate the scale of what has been accomplished over the past month, and the emotions attached to making it this far. It is beyond my skill, in any case. There will be outright winners, and those that finish top of their classes, but to measure achievement in time penalties alone is perhaps to miss the point, this adventure is so much more than just a position on a leader board, or a trophy gathering dust in a cabinet.

This rally is a living thing, we are completely immersed in it, it governs your day and with every kilometre you complete you feed the beast, and it grows bigger and bigger. There is nothing I can think of that comes quite as close as a single event, and each and every one of us has a story to tell, winners or not. We may all be driving the same route, heading to the same place, but everyone has completed their own rally, and the story of that is as personal as the cars that we have driven. We all compete under the same banner, but this event is the sum of everyone’s testament, and for that is greater than the sum of its parts.

And now, after all of this time on the road, we find ourselves in Dijon. From Beijing, through places that we had never heard of, or that were mere names in an Atlas, we are just 300 clicks from Paris. This story, your stories, that have in some cases taken a lifetime to create, is nearly over and the results have been set in stone.

No huge errors were made over the final kilometres of competition, and there would be no heinous intervention from the rally Gods, to cruelly snatch victory away from anyone. For just a second this morning, it looked as though there may have been, with mystery fluid under the Chevy of Tony Sutton and Andrew Lawson, that thankfully seemed to be nothing too troublesome. There was even some hope for Tony Rowe and Mark Delling, after they protested their test penalty yesterday, and presented the video evidence to prove their cause. VAR intervened and the penalty was rescinded.

But there wasn’t enough time for anyone to influence the course of victory for Tony Sutton and Andrew Lawson, who are our overall winners, a tremendous achievement in the Chevrolet, in their first crack at this event. Tony and Mark were 2:16 away in the end and can take tremendous heart in being one of just three Vintage machines to be going home with a Gold Medal. Third place was secured by the Perez Compancs, Jorge and Cristobal, who despite having suffered the heartbreak of losing the lead after holding it for so long, have the incredible experience of competing in the event as Father and Son.

In the Classic Category Brian Palmer and David Bell said Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, to their error from the previous day and despite their closest pursuant dropping only three seconds on the day compared to their 19, they did enough to finish first by just 35 seconds to Harold Goddijn and Corinne Vigreux in second, bringing the baby blue Porsche home ahead of Steve Osborne and Robert Smith, who have entertained us the whole way from Beijing in the Escort.

All of the top three in the classic category won Gold Medals, a feat only achieved by 14 crews, including Marc Vervisch and Bernard Vanderplaetsen in the 1948 Bentley Bobtail, a wonderful achievement in a car of such an age.

It is no mean feat in the classic category either, and to the 11 crews there that have achieved gold, I also offer the utmost congratulations. This list is completed by Peter Gerstrom and Mark Tilbury, Patrick Galbraith and Dean Aaron, Friedrich Müller and Robert Huber, Jim and Dani Callaghan, and son Tucker, Gerd Bühler and Laurenz Feierabend, John Henderson and Lui MacLennan, Mike and James Cattermole and Paul Maddicott and Lee Potter. It is not just about gold medals though, simply reaching Paris is a tremendous achievement, and even those that have spent time with cars on recovery trucks are deserving of applause. Theirs is but a different story, of overcoming their own tales of adversity and reaching the finish in the best way they possibly could.