5ème Rallye VHRS du Médoc, 2019

The Opel Commodore A GS of Jean-Francois Quintard and Gregoire Migraine.  They were classified 18th.

The Rallye du Médoc takes place in early December each year and runs through the famous vineyards of the Bordeaux wine region.  It is really three rallies in one event, with a speed rally for modern cars, a speed rally for historic competition cars and a regularity rally for historic competition cars.  This first blog post on the event covers the regularity rally for Véhicule Historique de Régularité Sportive or VHRS for short.  Rather than competing on speed these cars compete to try and complete each section of the rally at an exact average speed or time.   This means that the navigator is very important in giving information to the driver to control their pace. Each crew can choose, depending on their cars performance, to choose whether to aim for a low, medium or high average speed during the event.  Many classic rallies are run on a regularity basis including the Rallye Monte-Carlo Historique.  This was the fifth running of the Medoc VHRS rally and it attracts a nice selection of classic rally cars. 

The lovely Morris Mini Cooper S of Arnaud Dupin and Frederic Bories.  They were classified 19th.

I took the photos below on the road section between the stages in Saint Yzans de Médoc and in the Parc Fermé in Lesparre Médoc.  It was lovely to see these cars and especially the Mini Cooper S, the Opels and the Lancias on the road.  My only disappointment was not to see the Chevrolet Corvair Monza except before the start of the rally and it didn’t complete a stage. 

The unusual rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair Monza.

Twenty four VHRS cars turned up for the rally and twenty two of them completed the rally; many are shown below.  The top three had a nice battle for victory and were quite close at the end of the six special stages.  As you might imagine from the pictures, we spectators and photographers got rather wet from the rain on Sunday.

1st. No.221 Volkswagen Polo G40 - Jean-Jacques Hervier & Maryse Errard.

The winning VW Polo driving through the rain in Saint Yzans de Médoc.

2nd.  No.236 Lancia Fulvia 1.3S - Christophe Bru & Bernard Lafite Dupont.

This lovely Lancia Fulvia came second and was top of those trying to achieve a low average speed.

3rd. No.228 Lancia Delta Integral - Cedric Martin & Hervé Reberga.

The third placed Lancia in the Parc Fermé at Lesparre Médoc.

7th.  No..212 Peugeot 205 GTi - David Jerome & Benedicte Jolivet.

I was sheltering from the rain under a tree when taking this picture of the highest placed car in the highest speed category.

Some other cars in the VHRS category:

The Porsche 911 SC of Houy Boucheny & Labade.

The MG B GT of the Monnereau's.

This Porsche 911 Carrera retired shortly after this picture.

A lovely old Alfa Romeo Guilia.

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John Etherton affirme son droit d'auteur à l'ensemble des photos sur ce billet de blog. Cependant, vous pouvez poster des photos ailleurs sur le web aussi longtemps que vous créditez le photographe, John Etherton, et ce blog, Rouenlesafx@blogspot.com et fournissez un lien vers cette page.

A lovely Opel Kadett GTE.