The team made up of Javier Ortega and “Cuni” Suarez finished sixth in the Rallye de Portugal, a rally that gathered more than one hundred participants and stood out for being extremely tough. Behind the wheel of his Lancia Fulvia HF, Ortega was the only representative of the Repsol Classic Team in the Portuguese race and his final position could be considered well-deserved, given the quality of the vehicles that took part.
The Portuguese rally was characterised, once again, by its extremely fast and very selective route. The start of the rally, at the Estoril circuit, gave too much of an advantage to the more powerful vehicles, which benefitted from margins of more than one and a half minutes over the pure rally cars. Then, the race continued northwards, with a base in Figueira da Foz, to then pass the selective special stages in the Arganil and Viseu mountains, before returning to Estoril. In total, 44 special speed tests, in which it was extremely difficult to reach the average speed – almost 60 km/h –.
The end of the Rallye de Portugal was overshadowed by a general fault in the timekeeping systems, which masked the overall standings. Double penalties, accumulated checkpoints, constant problems with the stopwatches… meant that almost nobody agreed with the standings finally published by the Race Organisers.
