New Caledonia Rally

Run through paradise

They don't play rugby, or any other kind of football in my Heaven. In my Heaven you stand on a tropical island hilltop among welcoming locals, looking half-an-hour east to misty mountain rainforests and the same distance west to a warm, blue ocean pocked with coral reefs. And at your feet, every two minutes, great arcs of the soft earth are sent soaring into the valley below by another screaming, sideways rally car.

New Caledonia is a little bit like Australia. This shouldn't be surprising, given it's only 1500km from Brisbane, closer even than Cairns. Just 500km long and 50km wide, the mainland of New Caledonia is like a concentrated Queensland: mountain ranges, rolling pastures and endless beaches, in your choice of brilliant white or volcanic red. It was even discovered and named by Captain James Cook, and later became a colony for European convicts.

But New Caledonia is completely different to Australia, because those felons were French. Today, its 300,000 French nationals - there's no such nationality as New Caledonian - see themselves like farther-flung Corsicans. Many, perhaps even most, speak only French.

Tim-Tams and Colgate may share shelf space at the Géant supermarché, but you never see a right-hand-drive car (let alone an Australian one) among the European cars and Japanese pick-ups that ply the island's road network.

The cars' headlights were still yellow and those roads almost entirely dirt when New Caledonia held its first rally in 1967. It's been run every year since, and, from 2001, has been a round of the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship.

To my knowledge, that makes this tiny island's rally one of the oldest, continuously-running motorsport events in the Asia-Pacific region, pre-dating New Zealand's first national rally by two years and long outliving its Australian contemporary, the Southern Cross Rally.

And my knowledge is personal. That first New Caledonian Safari was won, after a gruelling, virtually non-stop, 27-hour circuit of the still-wild island - complete with a log-raft river crossing - by the Volvo 122S of John Keran and my father, Max Stahl.

The following year, my mother, Margaret, co-drove for Ann Ross in a Peugeot 204 to win the Safari's Coupe des Dames (ladies' cup).

I went to New Caledonia with my wife on holiday last year - coincidentally, the 40th anniversary of my dad's win. So I borrowed from my dad a 1967 list of entrants, and a photo of him and Keran, smart and suited, accepting their trophy.

Gaëtan Barreteau, president of the ASANC (Association Sport Automobile de Nouvelle Caledonie), came to meet me for a coffee at my hotel in Noumea. Barreteau, a retired tele-communications technician, has been involved in the rally in one way or another since the early 1970s.

Barreteau apologised that they didn't have much in the way of archives or old photos. I asked him where the prize-giving photo had been taken. "Right here at the Nouvata Park Hotel," he said. "We have always used the Nouvata as our rally headquarters."

I missed the 2007 rally by a couple of weeks. But in April 2008, I was there.

As happens on islands, the New Caledonia Rally has evolved in semi-isolation. It's unique, yet almost familiar. Its roads, its route, its cars and competitors all impart a flavour that's not quite like anywhere else's. And the base stock of 1967 is still clearly there.

The route has been condensed since the 1970s, both to fit modern servicing and media needs, but also because of the effect of a sealed road network on a small, narrow island. There's still an abundance of dirt roads, but most dead-end at either a beach or a mountain shack.

Drivers know the rally for its contrast of extremely fast, wide, hard-packed mining roads, and tight, loamy, mountain roads. They're like marine grease when it's actually raining, but have an eerie ability to be squeegeed dry. This year's rally used a total of just five road stages, each run two or three times.

In 1967, five Australian crews competed in the rally. Small handfuls have followed several times since. Though now a round of the APRC (the season-opener this year, before the Rally of Canberra), the Aussie presence doesn't quite reflect our geographic proximity.

Just two all-Aussie crews - Dean Herridge/Chris Murphy (Cusco Racing Subaru) and Scott Pedder/Glen Weston (MRF Tyres Mitsubishi Evo IX) - and two Aussie professional co-drivers made the trip this year, joining a few Kiwis and Japanese in the 26-car field. Two-time APRC champ Cody Crocker has never been here.

The reason again ties in directly with 1967, when New Caledonia was discovered to have as much as 25 percent of the world's nickel deposits. Economic confidence, and a currency linked to the Euro, makes New Caledonia significantly more expensive than, say, nearby Vanuatu or Fiji.

That international fiscal barometer-burger, the Big Mac, costs A$7.40 in Noumea.

All of which prompts the ASANC to put together what's regarded as the most generous competitor incentive package in the APRC. That is, beyond the 'eternal spring' weather, the azure oceans, the paradisiacal Ile des Pins, et cetera.

Australian co-drivers Mark Stacey and Bill Hayes know the roads well. Hayes last year partnered local legend Jean-Louis Leyraud to a couple of victories in the four-round local championship.

Stacey, 2006 winner alongside current driver Katsuhiko Taguchi (MRF Tyres Mitsubishi Evo IX), would win again this year. They blitzed the first night's stadium 'super special', braved the second day's 170km/h ridge-running roads, and survived the third day's slithering, muddy mountain roads that took out two of the top four competitors.

Kaguchi/Stacey also had a near miss with the wildlife. New Caledonia has no kangaroos, wombats or other familiar, wandering furniture, but it does have long-antlered Rusa Deer, introduced from Indonesia a century ago, and today occasionally found beyond 140km/h crests.

Deer are also notorious for gnawing through the damp, clotted-paper bark of the native niroule until the whole tree falls over. The niroule looks very similar to our Eucalypt, and produces an aromatic oil that's also similar, yet different.

For four decades, New Caledonia's rally cars have been evolving in their own way. A constantly updated diet of backyard-prepped French cars mixes it with the usual Japanese suspects (Galants and P510s then, Evos and WRXs now), and always, amazingly, two or three of the latest works weapons.

These latter wear some of the family names evident in the '67 Safari, their having gone on to establish the island's major vehicle import, rental and servicing corporations.

This year's pre-event chat noir (black cat) was the frantic, fantastic Fiat Punto Super 2000 of Gaël Lecerf/Yvon Catala. After Friday night's Super Special, only three of the AWD turbo Group N cars were quicker.

A trio of rally-bred, auto industry big-wigs - Lecerf (vehicle servicing), Pascal Jeandot (of Renault, Volvo, Kia importer Groupe Jeandot) and Philippe Blanche (Visa Car Rental) - had gone thirds in buying the $500,000, works-built Fiat last year. Both Jeandot and Blanche were driving Renault Clios in this year's rally.

Only Jeandot's car lasted long enough into day two to drive past the middle one-third that remained of their Fiat. Lecerf had endoed the car off a ridge.

Jean-Louis Leyraud's Subaru was another local favourite. "He uses the guys from Possum Bourne Motorsport; they do a really good job with the car," said co-driver Hayes. "It's a good car, he drives it really well and he spends the money to maintain it."

Aussie Subaru stalwart Dean Herridge was here for the first time. Indeed, it would be a rally of firsts for the Perth-based driver, with a new car and team from Cusco Racing (Japan) and a new co-driver in Brisbane's Chris Murphy. Herridge, who looks like he's just stepped down from the cockpit of an Avro Lancaster, is supplementing Cusco team regular Hiroshi Yanasigawa in the APRC chase. And you know what that means.

With no PlayStation library of South Pacific island rally stages, Herridge's only experience of New Caledonia had been a 10-minute grab from an in-car DVD. And Murphy, an experienced and highly-rated co-driver, was likewise part of the learning curve.

But by the second day of the three-day rally, Herridge caught and passed the stage times of team-mate Yanagisawa, stealing third outright even before the Japanese driver slid off on the final morning's Katrikoin stage. Nobody had looked like catching Taguchi/Stacey out in front, but in the same 35km stage, Herridge would be gifted second place by fellow Aussies Scott Pedder and Glenn Weston, likewise on their maiden voyage to New Caledonia.

"The right wheel went onto the grass, and 5km/h, over the edge," Pedder explained.

He'd been a cert for second, and having a ball until then. "I suppose it's strange to be coming here, because it's not a place that you generally connect with rallying. But obviously with the French connection, it's understandable that it's quite strong here. The organisers are very professional, and some of the local crews here are very professional and very fast."

He wasn't kidding. Jean-Louis Leyraud is New Caledonia's second most famous sporting personality (after international footballer, Christian Karembeu). He's also manager of the multi-brand automotive importer Almameto.

Leyraud has won this rally three times and been New Caledonian rally champion no fewer than 11 times. Happily for me, he's also the human history book of rallying in New Caledonia. "I remember that Volvo," Leyraud smiled.

In 1967, he was a 16-year-old running service for his famous rally-driving father, Jean-Paul. His father had also rallied in Australia, contesting the 1957 Mobilgas Round Australia in a Citroën DS.

The 1967 rally had left Noumea at 1:00pm on Saturday, December 2, heading north along the west coast. The collection of 30-odd cars - Citroën DS19s, an Isuzu Bellett, NSU 1000 TT, Fiat 600, several Mini Mokes, BMC works driver Tony Fall's Morris Cooper S and five Australian crews - had to average 60km/h on dirt roads as they climbed and clambered back and forth over the island's mountainous spine.

They tackled the fast and precipitous mining roads of the west coast up to Koumac, the first car reaching the north-western fishing village at 10:00pm. Providing their cars were in one piece, the quickest crews got some rest before they were off again at 4am, descending into the dense rainforest of the east coast. The southward run was punctuated by the human-powered, log-raft river crossing at Hienghène, and yet another mountain traverse to Bourail on the west coast.

The Keran/Stahl Volvo left La Foa at 2pm and was back in Noumea at 4pm. The same trip this year still took two hours, all of it sealed and some of it motorway. Their victory was the first for an Australian crew in an international rally.

Jean-Louis himself drove the Safari for the first time in 1971 in a Fiat 124 Spider. He won his first championship in 1979 in a BMW 2002 Alpina, and subsequent machines have included Escort BDAs, a Datsun (Violet) KP710, Alfa 75 Turbo and an Escort Cosworth. For the past 10 years he's been almost exclusively Subaru.

Leyraud has had several drives in New Zealand and a couple in Japan and Australia before, but this year, for the first time, the 57-year-old is venturing out for the three rounds of the Pacific Cup.

"At that time, we had the Safari and all the roads were gravel roads here," he told me. "We went everywhere, all through New Caledonia. For me ... it's just a matter of, 'Better to go outside', also for the experience of meeting new people; knowing new countries."

Heaven will have to wait.

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