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Rally d’Italia
18 - 21 October 2012
Gravel
A founding round of the World Rally Championship in 1973, Italy’s WRC qualifier has always been one of the highlights of the season with challenging stages and throngs of enthusiastic fans commonplace.
Up until 2004 the rally was based in the Italian Riviera town of Sanremo on the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea. Stages took place on the narrow and tricky mountain roads of Italy’s Liguria province with the route also extending into Tuscany for a series of runs on gravel to increase the spectacle further.
In 2004 the rally switched to picturesque Sardinia and to a new base in the port town of Olbia in the north of the island. While the route was all new, the event didn’t lose any of its appeal, attracting competitors and spectators in great number.
The stages in Sardinia are characterised by their challenging and varied nature. Although they are predominantly fast and narrow, the terrain is a mixture of flat open areas and undulating tracks through woodland with water splashes and spectacular jumps thrown in for good measure.
Ordinarily the surface is hard with rock-strewn sections a constant menace, while ruts will often form after the first pass. However, some parts of the route are on softer ground and can be prone to damage in the event of heavy rainfall.
As with most gravel rallies, road position can have a major bearing on the result due to the effect of cleaning the course of loose-surface gravel and the formation of hanging dust clouds: Jari-Matti Latvala’s victory for Ford in 2009 owed much to the delays that drivers running behind him suffered while fighting their way through plumes of dust.
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