The 23rd Palma Canaria Norte Rally

As with last year's 22nd Edition of this rally, news in advance of the 23rd Palma Canaria Norte Rally was, well, I certainly didn't see or hear any, though I'm told it's been "all over" the TV and the newspapers for the last couple of weeks. Yes, it might have been in the sports pages, but if you don't look at those ... Honestly, I'm not complaining, because I do enjoy motor sports, but it just makes me giggle.

Otherwise, it could seriously piss me off to find out that I can't leave home for the entire day and, you would imagine that someone (the council maybe) would think to let residents know about road closures. Still, this is Tenerife, not the "real world." :)

Last year, I found out about the event in time, because a barrier had been placed across the the end of my road and I had, by sheer chance, walked down there with the dog earlier in the morning to see it. This is not something I would normally do.

This year, the first I knew was at around 4 p.m., when I started hearing "racing car" noises. The first one seemed like "a bit noisy car", a few subsequent ones made me think that a local "boy racer" was zipping up and down the valley - it has been known.

It wasn't until at least half a dozen "noisy" cars had passed, when the penny dropped and I remembered that it is around this time of year that the rally comes past the door. Duh! :)

And, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that it will do so every year to be able to be used to it by now. The rally did pass here last year, but it had not done for the previous five years. This, I discovered today, was because the local authorities hadn't given permission - based on complaints from residents - mainly because of the environmental impact, not just from cars, but spectators leaving behind trash, etc.

I'm afraid that I am of the opinion that, since it is only a one day event and we do need a variety of things that attract people to the area, that it might be "good business" to employ somebody to clean up. After all, local restaurants, shops, etc., would benefit from "captive" trade. Always supposing that we know in advance, of course!

So, having been, once again, presented with this fait accompli, it seemed to me that the best thing to do was to just get on with enjoying the show and taking a few "snaps" for you to see. It's not easy taking pictures of fast moving vehicles, with a "point and shoot" digital camera that has a serious delay between clicking the button and it taking the picture, mind you ...

But, after a bit of "juggling practice," I'm happy to say that this year I managed to get more photos with cars in them than I have of empty stretches of asphalt - as I have on previous occasions! :)

The few photos shown here are not the best, but are just a taste. There'll be more on our photo blog during the week.

One of the better images that I was able to get was this one of José Mª Santana's 2L Ford Fiesta ST. Apparently, this rally was his first outside of his native island of Gran Canaria. That press release also tells me that today's rally was the first in the Fiesta Sporting Trophy season in Santa Cruz de Tenerife province this year, which means there will be more rally action to catch if you are around the island.

Don't ask me when and where though, because extensive searches on Google, in Spanish, only turned up past news and nothing of forthcoming rally dates.

See the Tenerife Rally Calendar for 2007

There are more and better photos of that car in previous rallies here and here.

Tenerife driver Juan Luis Cruz and copilot, Carlos Arocha in their Subaru Impreza WRC, won today's XXIII Rally Palma Canaria Norte, the third rally on the regional calendar and the first date of the season in Tenerife.

It was unusual that the cars were coming past in the afternoon today and this, I learned, was owning to an accident, at around 9:30, on the road up from Masca. Not a bad one, I understand, but oil had been spilled onto the road surface. And accidents are no surprise, when you've seen the video action of rallies on these roads!

Because of the delay, the "vast crowd" of spectators in this part of the valley had moved on elsewhere: me and the dog made three of us when we got there!

Just to get an idea, this map will show you the route from Masca (red flag) to Buenavista (green flag) and remember that, as well as being twisty, it's all "up hill and down dale." In the PDF program of the rally the word "chicane" features three times in the description of this 15.3 km section which started from the Restaurant La Pimienta in Masca. Mind you, this might be the easy section, since the following one was Icod el Alto (alto means high and above Icod is steep) and Las Medíanias.



See larger map | Google Earth

Labels: Tenerife Rally

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