The mid-week long read: Roman holiday

Walter Röhrl is a figure of singular determination. Widely regarded as the greatest rally driver of his generation, this is the man who beat the four-wheel drive competition with an outdated rear-wheel drive car, who refused to race for any team endorsing tobacco sponsorship, who put safety first and still beat the best, whose understated style turned rallying driving into an art form.

Röhrl knows his own mind then, and has deployed it with astonishing efficacy in nearly every major rally around the world. His wingman for most of these was Christian Geistdörfer, co-driver for Röhrl for an entire decade between 1977 and 1987 when he officially retired from rallying. The pair were crowned World Rally Champions in 1980 and 1982, and won the Monte Carlo rally no fewer than four times. They shared the highs and lows on all of rallying’s greatest stages. All except one, that is. Until now.

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The Spring of 2018 marked a moment when an overdue box was ticked for both men, when one of rallying’s greatest pairings finally took on the halo event that they had never tackled together: the Mille Miglia.

Röhrl and Geistdörfer could not be more different, one tall and introspective, always quiet and unassuming, the other a smaller, fuller figure, prone to colourful outbursts of elaborate cursing at the slightest sense of injustice. “And you can hear it a hundred metres away,’ remarks the sanguine Röhrl with a familiar fondness. For all their differences, these two men know and trust each other deeply. And so they must. “In the cockpit, we’ve each placed our lives in the other’s hands,” says the 65-year-old Geistdörfer.

In its heyday, the Mille Miglia was considered the toughest race on earth, a thousand miles flat out through the normally quiet countryside and narrow village streets of northern and central Italy. Brescia to Rome and back – in a single day. It was a race that claimed many lives in a period of high-risk, low safety motorsport, and its combination of unique setting, demanding driving and ever-present danger has made it one of the most iconic road races in history.

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Today, the Mille Miglia is somewhat less precarious, run as it is as an exotic time trial for the crème-de-la-crème of vintage sports cars. Some 450 teams have four days to cover the route, and a road book to guide them. No longer a test of out-and-out speed, the winner in the modern era is the team that collects the fewest penalty points over the course of more than eighty special trials. It’s a contest of consistency. And of not breaking down.

About to share the cockpit of a 1956 Porsche 356 A 1500 GS Carrera Coupé, Röhrl and Geistdörfer meet in the days before the event in Tuscany, to get a feel for their car and surroundings, and to reminisce over former glories before this exciting extra chapter in their rallying ledgers begins.

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Röhrl carefully opens the door of the car and bends down to stick his head inside. He strokes the burgundy driver’s seat and the beige interior lining. Then he gingerly folds his 1.96m frame into the cosy cockpit. After closing the door, he crosses his arms in front of his chest, hands away from the controls for a meditative moment. He enjoys the stillness for a few minutes. And smiles.

Meanwhile, Geistdörfer is walking around the immaculately restored 356 and taking photos of the stickers on his side of it. They show “C. Geistdörfer” holding a stopwatch and “W. Röhrl” with a steering wheel underneath.

Röhrl places his big hands on the slender wooden steering wheel and slides his thumbs up and down its perfectly polished surface. His left hand is at the ten o’clock position and his right hand at two o’clock. Although he’s driven nearly every Porsche model, this is the first time he’s ever sat in a 356 A 1500 GS Carrera.

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Geistdörfer has now circled the car four times, opened the luggage compartment, coiled up a battery charging cable, lifted the hood, and peered into the fuel tank with a flashlight. He’s a professional co-driver who takes care of everything, while Röhrl simply has to drive. That’s the way it’s always been for the pair, and old habits die hard.

They exchange nods and Geistdörfer gets in. “We’re extremely good at being silent together,” says Röhrl. “We might be in the car for 12 hours and spend hardly ten minutes in conversation. Christian gives directions the whole time. When he’s not doing that, it’s just good to hear the sounds of the car.” They’ve never quarrelled. And Geistdörfer has never misread the route. “I’ve always told Christian that a co-driver is only allowed to misread the route twice—the first time and the last time,” says Röhrl with a grin.

“A co-driver has to not only read maps correctly but also be quick on the uptake and possess unusual presence of mind,” says Geistdörfer. “But the most important thing is to have unshakable confidence that the person sitting at the wheel next to you also wants to survive the whole crazy endeavour. I’ve always admired Walter’s singleness of purpose. And if it crossed over into stubbornness, I could see where he was coming from. My job was always to prevent problematic situations from arising in the first place.”

And this Geistdörfer has always done with aplomb. In the 1980s it wasn’t unusual to find him pulling out the fuses for the rear lights on foggy nights to prevent the drivers following them from using their path. “I prepared the fuses beforehand with aluminium foil so I could just barely reach them without removing my seat belt,” he recalls with the steely will to win still evident in his eyes. Were they ever afraid? “At the beginning of every race,” Röhrl chimes in, “I was always sure that nothing would go wrong and that we were invincible. In retrospect that was totally stupid.”

Especially so in the context of the Monte Carlo Rally in 1983. “Someone handed us a few oranges at a time check,” Röhrl recalls. “I put them on the back seat and promptly forgot about them. But then later I tried to brake only to find that they had rolled under my pedals, right in the middle of the twenty-minute special stage from Le Moulinon to Antraigues! I managed to collect all of them after about seven minutes. At full speed. And we won the stage by three seconds.”

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Geistdörfer has entered the Mille Miglia five times without Röhrl, and Röhrl once without Geistdörfer. What do the two of them expect from their first Mille Miglia together? “We’re driving in one of our favorite countries,” says Röhrl. “Not least of all because the Italians are so wonderfully crazy about cars. They love their Mille.”

Geistdörfer is looking forward to the atmosphere and the scenery, but he’s taking his role as seriously as ever, arriving a day earlier than Röhrl in order to be there for the technical inspection and the traditional sealing ceremony. They already know that they won’t win, because their 62-year-old Porsche is too young. “Pre-war cars are assigned a coefficient that improves their chances—although they’re also harder to handle,” says Geistdörfer. And Röhrl adds, “The slow windshield wipers on the 356 are the first step toward deceleration.”

The familiar themes of dyed-in-the-wool racers, already preparing their excuses. As it happens, the 2018 event does clearly favour the pre-war era, with the first 19 places locked out by cars built before 1935. Röhrl and Geistdörfer’s 356 Carrera places an inconspicuous 179th from 371 finishers, but victory, for once in the lives of these most competitive of men, plays second fiddle to simply taken part. The dream team is back together once more, and savouring every minute.