Sweden's Bjorn Waldegard won the 1979 World Rally Championship for Ford. Photo: Martin Holmes
Ford were very cautious about rallying on asphalt, and Sanremo included 480km of asphalt, on roads which were highly specialised and very unsuitable for the Escorts with their live rear axles.The 1979 season was confusing for the two rival drivers. Mikkola won four events but retired in Greece and Finland (both due to cylinder head gasket failure), and no dropped scores, starting slowly with fifth places on both Monte Carlo and Sweden. In Sweden both Ford drivers lost time off the road, though Waldegard climbed back to second. Waldegard only won two events, with two dropped scores. He had a heart stopping disappointment in Monte Carlo when a fallen rock on the penultimate stage forced him to stop and move it out of the way. In Portugal Mikkola beat Waldegard 1-2, in the Ivory Coast it was the other way around.
Waldegard even drove a Mercedes in 1979, in the Ivory Coast Rally. Photo: Martin Holmes
The 1979 season started with it being known that Ford would retire from the WRC at the end of the year when the rear-drive Escort ended its mass production days, though historic rally car suppliers are still building versions of the car 40 years later!Nonetheless, the team embarked on their most ambitious programme for many years in 1979. Mercedes continued rallying into 1980 and suddenly changed plans and pulled out of the WRC at the end of the year. Even on the Air Afrique flight from Abidjan back to Paris after the 1980 Ivory Coast event, the Mercedes team director, Erich Waxemberger, spent the whole flight planning his team’s 1981 plans, which sadly were never going to happen. Their contracted driver, Walter Rohrl, had told the German media the 1981 Mercedes was not a sure-fire winner. Rohrl and his media colleagues had shot themselves in the feet. Waldegard and Mikkola had a mixture of teams to drive for in 1980 then went their separate ways in 1981. Mikkola entered the Audi age, and Waldegard spent his future with Toyota on African events.
Escort driver, Hannu Mikkola, won the 1979 New Zealand Rally in wet and slippery conditions. Photo: Martin Holmes
As an insight into the primitive world of WRC rallying 40 years ago, the season finished only 11 days before Christmas.This in pre-internet days was a nightmare situation for the media, most of whom also would not have been aware that championship rules dropped certain lower rated scores. The highly-respected Automobile Year annual book had a merciful escape from disgrace. I received by mail from printers in Europe my contributor’s copy four days after the end of the Ivory Coast Rally, and there was a bold feature story headline that Waldegard had become the inaugural World Rally Driver Champion. How did they do this? Eventually I asked the Editor, who said that Waldegard was so far in the lead of the series on closing for press that printing that headline seemed a safe bet. He did not know about the dropped scores rule, and the FIA in those days left the media to work things out by themselves. Unlike Mercedes, it all came right for the media in the end!
More WRC news:
https://rallysportmag.com/feature-kiwi-co-drivers-death-defying-ride-with-ari-vatanen/ https://rallysportmag.com/qa-sebastien-loeb-gets-acquainted-with-the-i20-wrc/VIP Exclusive Content
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