one for Carl Gibbs and anyone else who like sideways gravel action

Saw that yesterday on Pistonheads, although I haven't read the whole thing through yet. Properly impressive, and as you say definite legend status!

Actually it isn't as impressive as it sounds.

Firstly it was third in class, not third in the event. Secondly, it was a high altitude event and even the non-turbo J-WRC cars were within 5% of the WRC cars. Definitely wasn't WRC cars as the gearboxes alone cost $400,000 however thats what the story implied he had beaten.

All kudos to him but its been blown out of all proportion by people with no understanding of the sport.

Interesting. Traditionally turbos are a massive help at altitude. So why wouldn't they help here?

You miserable yorkshire f*ck.

Lack of oxygen. The WRC cars were 60BHP down on power, around 20%.

Nope, just realist. Recognise it for the achievement it was instead of portraying it as some unrealistic supercar.

Lack of air should affect N/A more than turbos, because you just push in more air with the latter. It's why they put blowers on plane engines. Unless of course the turbos are running beyond their capacity, where a bigger turbo is of course the answer, but I'm guessing that's not an option?

(I think one of the reasons my hire car in the states was so damned gutless was we were driving at 2000+ metres a lot of the time. Though it was pretty weedy even lower down).

Errr, completing Rally Mexico in a homemade E30 BMW with no service crew and actually getting a decent result, I'd call that a pretty awesome acheivement, irrelevant of the slightly erroneous reporting!