Wednesday, May 3, 2006

No more "showing off"!

There was a post rally shock for rally winner Sebatien Loeb and three of his colleagues when the Stewards ordered that he, third placed Gigi Galli, fourth place Manfred Stohl and sixth place Daniel Sordo were all to be given a one-rally exclusion penalty - to be suspended from the next event - if their infringements were repeated any time during the season.

The offence committed by each of them was that they carried out "doughnuts" spin-turns in the stadium at the end of the rally. Each of the drivers were told to perform these spectacular spin-turns, by officials who did not realise that this manoeuvre is banned these days, on safety grounds, by the FIA. The stewards asked the crews to identity and summon the officials concerned, but by then this was no longer possible. Doughnut turns in the Cordoba stadium are already one of the legends of this rally.

In 1991, the reigning world champion Carlos Sainz entered the stadium as the winner of the 11th Rally Argentina, performed his spin turns for the fun of the spectators, and in doing so promptly broke the gearbox on his Toyota Celica ST165. To the delight of the thousands of spectators and the horror and bewilderment of officials, Sainz proceeded to drive up to the finish podium to receive his awards, in reverse gear.

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