Dullness and predictability are underrated virtues. This is brought into sharp relief as we head onto a former stage of the World Rally Championship, the one dubbed Lagoa Azul. It sounds lovely, even translated to the more pedestrian Blue Lagoon, and it’s fair to say that there are worse places to be than the Portuguese Riviera. We are armed with the right weapon for the job, too: an ex-works Alpine A110 1600S. It’s just that you don’t so much drive an Alpeen as wear one. What’s more, the chimp behind the wheel, the one with the narrow operating window and tan-repelling skin, doesn’t really ‘do’ heat. It must be ten thousand degrees inside here.
Oh, and the smell of unburned hydrocarbons is beginning to have an effect. So much so, the photo shoot is temporarily abandoned, the wheelman earning the nickname ‘The Sprinter’ on account of the speed with which he alights from the car before communing with nature – though not quite far enough away to escape the sound of laughter. Why, oh why, couldn’t we have done the shoot on, say, an industrial estate in the north of England in winter? While none of this preamble seems strictly relevant, it serves to illustrate that real rally drivers are a hardy bunch,
