Road rallies – Sun Rally 2011: hell under the sun! – Friday 6:30 p.m.: let’s go!

Posted on by admin

Sun Rally 2011: hell under the sun !

Road rallies - Sun Rally 2011: hell under the sun! - Friday 6:30 p.m.: let's go!

As expected, the 2011 French road rally championship starts off with a lot of twists: Pierre Mouneu falls heavily and forfeits, the Corsicans make a sensational entry and Maxime Mettra wins the race ! Story.

Friday 6:30 p.m.: let’s go !

Great moment of the start of the rally: in the team of the Journal moto du Net, we stick together: Pierre "Freestyle" Mouneu will have to count on Maxime "Navigator" Mettra to help him to follow the route, because Moon does not have to never been a fan of road book reading…

As for Stephane Ricciarelli, he is determined to beat everyone up, as he did on his land last year (read .

It is not yet dark when the start of the night stage is given, but with 56 minutes of connection leading to the first special, the Col de Babaou, the sun of this Friday, October 18 has largely disappeared..

On the first pass of the Babaou special, Stephane Ricciarelli opened the ball on the handlebars of his Yamaha 450 WRF, eight tenths ahead of Maxime Mettra and his KTM 950 Supermoto. A tenth behind we find Julien Vezzuti, a local of the stage riding a KTM 990 Superduke. Moon does not shine yet (16th time at 7”16 from Stephane), but without any recognition he could only take a few benchmarks…

The road course is so generous that it feels like the Ultimate Rally: multiple intersections, changes of direction, dirt roads, the total! For my part, one of my additional headlights having packed its bags (I should not have changed their positioning just before departure, because the right xenon did not hold), I have to stop to dismantle quickly and take 4 minutes of penalties at the next time control. The 60 km / h average is not easy to maintain in such conditions !

We are now in the second special of the course, the Col des Fourches. And there, problem: the radios do not pass between the arrival and the departure … After long telephone discussions between the race management and the special stewards, the night pass of the Fourches is canceled….

Almost all the competitors in the rally are ready when the starts are restarted towards the end of the loop, that is to say almost two hours lost … And this delay will accumulate !

The race management decided to have us join Solliès-Pont by the end of the loop, with 20 minutes of assistance at the assistance park and a new start for a second lap with only the Babaou special, then direct return to Solliès– Bridge. The radio link problems should be sorted out overnight and everything should be fine tomorrow … The pilots pack starts to growl – "they could have checked before"and departures are therefore given back two by two for a neutralized end of the loop.

At the assistance, we refuel and quickly swallow a cereal bar or a banana to set off again towards the Col de Babaou.

This is where Moon intends to make the powder speak … And even a little too much! With his lack of preparation (everything has accelerated since his decision to come and run the Sun Rally at the last moment), this time it did not happen: he fell heavily by arriving too quickly in a pin. "I arrived too quickly, I put the bike in a glide but it didn’t work so I straightened up, I put the brakes on and I ended up straight off the road on the front wheel! I dived 10 meters below and I crashed on a big slab !", Pierre Mouneu will tell us on Sunday on his hospital bed. He finally got away with a nasty fracture of the neck of the femur and the cruciate ligaments of the knee affected: farewell to the 2011 French rally championship … Courage Mister Moon, and heal yourself quickly because many races await you !

Meanwhile, the delay accumulated and the second lap of the night stage was finally cut short: return to Solliès-Pont for everyone.

To be validated, a stage must include at least two stages. This night stage should therefore not be able to award points for the French championship: case to be continued.

Arrived at more than 4 o’clock in the morning, I feel that I will not sleep much because the start of the day’s stage is scheduled from 8 am … For the moment I put the motorcycle in the parc ferme, assistance one hour to be allocated to us before departure.

A little over two hours later, most of the competitors have not been able to enjoy much more sleep … I collect my Yamaha FZ8 and give it to our faithful assistant Gilles de so that he can recondition it for the day stage.

Marcus HIMSELF

Related articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *