 Ennestal Classic - August 04 by Reinhard Hipel
The event was really great. The organisation was on the same level as the Mille Miglia - but the
rally was far more competitive. With real navigation challenges
- and with an interesting average-speed of 50km/h on the
routes, which is not very slow on narrow and steep alpine roads ...
The Start. We had a 610km leg across the Alps - on one day! 12 hours driving non stop ... if you keep the average of 50km/h. If you want to get some time for relaxing and eating - or changing the plugs after extreme downhill-sprints as I had to do several times - you have to be much faster. 
The Crowds. The austrian road police - which normally is extremely "uncooperative" with speeding - was absent ... holidays or so.
We made a mix of good and of "full house" results - between 8 Points (8 hundreds of a second
difference to the target time, wow!) and 1.000 Points in some special stages.
Our final result was no. 62 of 185. Better than ever expected. The car made a real excellent job!
On the third day everybody was giving their very best on the routes - just for fun and to get some spare time before the next special stage. And I got more and more used to throwing my Aston round the corners in a way I never had thought it could be possible with this car. The improved brakes and handling make a tremendous difference. I even could keep in touch with a Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing which was driven by an Austrian ex rally champ!!! To travel to Austria we used a car-night-train from Hamburg to Munich and made the last 300 kms to "Gröbming" on our own wheels. But the car is so reliable now that we could have done all the 2000 kms down and up on our own wheels - just like the Bentley boys still do now... In our hotel we had Rowan Atkinson - with his Jag and also a couple with their Bentley Speed Six who made all the way from England on their own wheels. Good sport. Result: Great event for big boys with big toys...
Reinhard Hipel
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