What do you do with a classic car that has just been "winterized" if you don't want to or can't drive the rally of all rallies, namely the Mille Miglia, which takes place at the same time? You drive to neighbouring Baden-Württemberg and start at the "Württemberg-Historic" - a small but excellent event for classic cars, organized by the ADAC and now in its 16th year.
For a Swiss person, this is actually very difficult to imagine: In a country governed by a Green Prime Minister (Winfried Kretschmann), it is still possible to hold a classic car rally. And what a rally it is: The organizing ADAC has put together two stages of 240 and 260 km within a radius of perhaps 40 km around the spa town of Bad Boll, which mainly lead along minor roads, melioration roads and forest roads. The route was peppered with a total of 39 special stages, which, as is customary in Germany and in contrast to Italy, were measured using light barriers. Our southern neighbors prefer the "hose measurement".
Volker Göbel, co-driver in the Aston Martin of Swiss driver Roger Suter and living less than 5 km from Bad Boll, was surprised: "We were actually driving in my living room, I know many of the routes from biking, but the fact that such a varied route was put together in such a small space really amazes me," he said on Saturday.
125 are enough
The ADAC was already pleased at the beginning of the year that so many entries had been received and that the Württember Historic was already fully booked in January. This historic event was open to vehicles built up to and including 1985, divided into a class with timekeeping and, as an alternative, "Touristik" - all in all a manageable number of participants, if you remember monster fields of over 400 cars (Mille Miglia) or 350 (GP Nuvolari)...
On Friday morning, in suboptimal weather with light drizzle and fog, the cars were sent out onto the track. In contrast to the previous year, the spectators were somewhat restrained, as nobody was in the mood to freeze to death with an umbrella and cool temperatures. The bad weather also prevented the participants from enjoying the quality of the scenery. With visibility sometimes only 20 meters, drivers and co-drivers concentrated on staying on the straight and narrow (i.e. the road).
The highlight of Friday's stage was a course at the traffic training facility in Birkhau. No fewer than four special stages were lined up one after the other - driving with a generous pace ensured that no penalty points were incurred, but the co-drivers had to put up with real physical contortions to read the stopwatches.
The stage finish on Friday evening was the "Deutsches Haus", situated on a hill in Weilheim, which used to be a popular destination for carriages and horse-drawn carts.
Decision by hundredths of a second
The weather gods had mercy for the second stage on Saturday and provided fine weather. Not only the teams benefited from the better weather conditions, the spectators along the route and especially at the stage location in Göppingen also enjoyed the beautiful weather. The carefully selected route once again led along secondary and melioration roads, and it could happen that an oversized thresher stood in the way after a bend ...
Throughout Saturday, there was a real final sprint at the front by hundredths of a second. In the end, the first-placed drivers were separated from the fifth-placed drivers by less than 2 seconds - after a 480 km drive and 39 special stages! In the end, Henglein / Zuckermeier (Porsche 911 RSR) came out on top.
Over 1000 spectators awaited the participants in the center of Göppingen, a well-done rally came to an end and what was important: accident-free!
The results
- 1st Henglein / Zuckermeier (D), Porsche 911 RSR, 3.51 points
- 2nd Inhester / Inhester (D), Porsche 911 RS, 3.60 points
- 3rd König / König (D), BMW 323, 4.18
- 4th Michalsky / Becher (D), Alfa Romeo Giulia, 4.88
- 5th Höpfel / Zimmermann (D), Toyota Corlolla, 5.40
- 6th Bronny / Kowaslki (D), Porsche 944, 6.03
- Also: 16th Suter / Göbel (CH / D), Aston Martin Le Mans, 8.90; 22nd Von Iwonski / Hager (CH), Jaguar XK 150, 11.55; 30th Von Iwonski / Grave (CH), Mercedes Benz 190 SL, 13.74
