Back in 2001, the ADAC Rallye Deutschland was knocking at the World Rally Championship’s door and had every chance of replacing Portugal on the following season’s calendar. The inaugural event was based in Trier and held on July 6-8.
To familiarise themselves with what was being described as a highly specific rally, Citroën, Peugeot, Ford and Skoda respectively dispatched the three-time French champion Philippe Bugalski, the world champion Marcus Grönholm, François Delecour and Armin Schwarz to sample the narrow roads through the Mosel valley vineyards and the slippery tracks of the Baumholder military ranges. The driver of the zero-car – a Porsche GT3 – was Walter Röhrl himself. I was asked to follow the event for the French sporting daily L’Equipe and I was thrilled to be able to get close to my hero!
The rally kicked off in warm sunshine with the twisty Mosel valley stages. Although they were marked out by bannering, they were difficult to follow since the same junction – approached from different directions – could serve more than once. I and two colleagues were treated to a helicopter ride out to SS1 with the then Citroën Sport boss Guy Fréquelin. The hapless Guy believed he had landed on an access road, but he was actually on a stage! The marshals understandably screamed at us because Bugalski’s Xsara could be heard approaching in the distance. We succeeded in taking off again just in time, accompanied by comprehensive jibing from the spectators…
Philippe Bugalski and his co-driver Jean-Paul Chiaroni (today a member of Citroën Racing’s rally staff) went on to claim their last major win with their Xsara T4 WRC, ahead of Austria’s Raimund Baumschlager (Red Bull-liveried Ford Focus). Meanwhile, Finland’s Marcus Grönholm (Peugeot 206 WRC), who wasn’t an asphalt expert, was visibly gobsmacked after completing ‘Baumholder’: “slippery, incredible”. Even so, he kept up his challenge for the lead until a mistake on the last day. He ended up in fourth place behind Delecour, but Schwarz’s Skoda Octavia WRC was forced out by gearbox trouble.
A decade after its first triumph with Bugalski and the Xsara, Citroën is consequently targeting its tenth straight win in Germany with its current WRC challenger, the DS3.