and raise funds for Race against Dementia.
In 1978 Renault entered two of their relatively new Renault 5 Alpine for the first round of that year’s World Championship, the famous Monte Carlo Rally. The drivers were Jean Ragnotti and Guy Frequelin. The tiny 1400 cc cars achieved the most remarkable result finishing in 2nd and 3rd places only beaten – and by less than two minutes – by the 3.0RS Porsche of Jen-Pierre Nicholas. 4Th, 5th and 6th were the works Fiat 131s of Rohrl, Darniche and Andruet.
Leeds based Peter Scott and his great friend Clive Baty have for many years discussed teaming up for the Rally Monte Carlo Historique. With Clive’s long term addiction to the Renault 5, there was never any doubt that his Renault 5 Alpine should be the chosen car and that it should be, as you will see from the pictures, an almost exact replica of the factory cars of the late seventies. The other key element was that Peters long association on this event with Sir Jackie Stewart’s charity ‘Race Against Dementia’ should continue and the charity is prominently represented on both the rally car and on the Subaru Outback assistance vehicle. For the second year in succession Neil Raven and Claire Raven from Ilkley Motor Club are crewing the Subaru and keeping Clive and Peter on the straight and narrow – and some of the roads on this event are very narrow!!
It has taken many months of preparation to get to this stage and on Monday morning Peter and Clive set off for Folkestone and the Channel Tunnel. Two hours after emerging from Le Shuttle they were in the Chez Bea restaurant in Cambrai for a quick bite before travelling the short journey to the wonderful farmhouse B&B ‘Le Clos Xavienne’ in Ribecourt La Tour owned by another old friend Xavier Leriche. Xavier had kindly taken delivery of the specialist studded tyres needed for the event and manufactured by the specialist Burzet company in Italy.
Next step was from Ribecourt-La-Tour to Chambery and the long uphill drive from Lyon to the town let them know that they were on the periphery of the French Alps. It was a troublesome day with two of the trailer tyres, despite recently having been refitted, continuously losing pressure and requiring stops in service areas to reinflate. The next task was to have the studded tyres fitted to the spare rims and sort out the recalcitrant trailer tyres, calibrate the rally computer and make their way to scrutineering in Turin.
Classic Yorkshire wishes the whole team well and ask our readers who can afford to do so, to donate to this wonderful charity. There are few of us who won’t, either directly or indirectly, by Dementia sometime in our lives.
Help Peter Scott raise money to support Race Against Dementia
Good luck Peter and Team.
Saw you depart from Turin, really sorry you had to retire. Well done anyway. Have mentioned you in the article I am writing for the Jaguar Driver magazine.