Sandro Munari

Rallying was a total mystery to me until 1972, when a young man named Sandro Munari achieved the first of his four Monte Carlo Rally victories and helped Lancia win the manufacturer’s world championship. As the UK press officer for Pirelli, I was expected to know about these things, so I set about learning all I could about this rather esoteric form of motor sport.

I discovered that rally drivers hardly ever compete on a nice smooth asphalt circuit, where the worst that can happen is that it rains. Their motor sport is much tougher: It is a series of races in which the driver and a co-driver navigate their car from one closed special stage to another. When they get there, they are flagged off and, with the co-driver shouting pace notes into the intercom, drive like hell to try to cover the prescribed distance—anything from 2 to 20 miles—faster than their opponents. The crew with the quickest aggregate time over all the special stages of the event is the winner.