DESTRA 3 LUNGA CHIUDE

The rallies of yesterday, the ones that spanned 30 years from 1960 to 1990 were not just simple races, but a concentration of adventure. They were excessively long, tortured that took place over of roads with impossible surfaces, the drivers always prepared for the worst. Day and night, searing sun or pouring craven rain, then snow and fog, dust and ice. The drivers had to compete in cars that broke, fitted with tyres unable to withstand the harshness of it all. A perfect contest to generate an incredible story. So here is a collection of various facts, many of which it has been difficult to track down, which could help those who were there at the time to remember, and those who weren’t to get to know. Page after page review an unrepeatable era in which there were not just the winners, but the surrounding companies, defeats born with the same dignity as victories, painful team orders and those who made generous gestures in renouncing a win to help a colleague in difficulty.
Fifty incredible stories that bring out once more recollections the memory cannot cancel. Times when rallies really were rallies. Things that happened that really were over the top, sometimes a good situation because, although they seem like romanticised tales, they were no more than the rule in those days. Carlo Cavicchi competed in just such rallies and wrote about them in the Italian motor sport magazines Autosprint and Rombo. Now, he has reopened his notebook and extracted the best of the best from it. Some stories really do induce dreams, told as they are by Jean-Claude Andruet, Attilio Bettega, Dario Cerrato, Hannu Mikkola, Raffaele Pinto, Tony Fassina, Luciano Trombottto, Maurizio Verini, Mauro Pregliasco, Sergio Barbasio and Amilcare Ballestreri. All rally drivers who really did write the history of their period. And all of them told by a great professional of the sport, Carlo Cavacchi.
The people the author has selected as the stars of this book are:
Rauno Aaltonen, Erik Carlsson, Pentti Airikkala, Markku Alén, Jean-Claude Andruet, Fulvio Bacchelli, Amilcare Ballestrieri, Sergio Barbasio, Attilio Bettega, Miki Biasion, Marc Birley, Tony Carello, Dario Cerrato, Jim Clark, Bernard Darniche, Per Eklund, Tony Fall, Guy Fréquelin, Kyösti Hämäläinen, Paddy Hopkirk, Harry Källström, Simo Lampinen, Bosse Ljungfeldt, Timo Makinen, Shekhar Mehta, Hannu Mikkola, Michèle Mouton, Sandro Munari, Federico Ormezzano, Alcide Paganelli, Raffaele Pinto, Fabrizia Pons, Mauro Pregliasco, Carlos Reutemann, Walter Röhrl, Carlos Sainz, Joginder Singh, Jean-Luc Thérier, Pauli Toivonen, “Tony” (Tony Fassina), René Trautmann, Luciano Trombotto, Ari Vatanen, Maurizio Verini, Björn Waldegård, Achim Warmbold.