Quote Originally Posted by AnttiL View Post
Yes. This was the case even in the group B days when they were allowed to use rally cars in recce, as many recce rounds as they wanted. Usually they drove at night to be able to use more speed...in Finnish they even called it ”practicing”. Crazy days.

And someone from Belgium probably can tell about Ypres and the big crowds spectating the recce.

And of course, Safari was even competed on open roads!
This went well into the 90s, I don’t know exactly when recce restrictions were introduced, but I know some crazy stories from Delecour about Monte. He said they were doing it day and night for two weeks before the rally. They even had catering vans meet them along the route and using equivalent cars with rollbars and everything. And he said they knew beforehand who was going to win, they would ocasionally sit to watch a few corners to see how fast the others were. Those were crazy times, but traffic was nothing like today.

There is an urban legend about Vatanen doing the recce for 1000 lakes, I read this in a book. He would do it by night also to avoid police speedtraps and he knew the pacenotes by heart, speaking as he drove. And the legend part is he would dip the headlights from time to time while driving flat out to “check” his notes.


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