wobow ²

2002 Rally GB

Vale's first event is Rally GB (Great Britain, mostly staged in Wales by this time). GB is notoriously rainy, muddy, and difficult. Probably he picked this rally because it was at the end of November and the MotoGP season was over, but personally I like to imagine there's a British tax evasion scheme element as well. Before I made the season timing connection I was very surprised that he'd pick this event, it's a very tough outing for his first real rally.

Vale showed up with a yellow as hell car which would promptly get covered in mud and an absolutely gorgeous helmet.

And what's that? WLF stays ON the race suit baby.

You get a built in buddy in rally, and Vale's codriver is an Italian named Carlo Cassina. We will learn more about him next rally!

Vale makes it all of one and a half stages before sliding off the road into a ditch and retiring. An inauspicious start! The consensus opinion (which I agree with) is that he was pushing too hard too soon.

2006 Rally New Zealand

Four years later he is back in the WRC, this time in Aotearoa! First of all you might recognize this car if you're a regular Scrutinizer of Images; this is the car that Marc had Vale sign.

In a pre-rally interview Vale talks about how his interest in rally started with Graziano:

"Rally is always my great passion, because when I was child I start to remember my father racing in rally, so I have a lot of memories of go with him in the car, or when I was growing up during the night with him in the countryside in Italy to make some good slide"

It looks like Graziano had a few decent results in the Italian championship and raced in Italian rounds of the WRC/ERC. And if we look at his rally history we find a familiar name:

Vale took Graziano's codriver from 1985 (Vale was 6) and kept him around until 2018. Okay. We don't have time to unpack all that.

The rally itself is again pretty rainy and muddy. One of the best parts of rally is that you have to do all your own repair/maintenance out on a roadside somewhere covered in dirt, a fantastic situation to put Vale in. Sorry about your anti-arm pump noodle arms.

Vale's approach is much more controlled and patient this time, and he keeps it together to finish a quite good 11th (including a 1 minute penalty for showing up late to stage 8).

Here's his stage (green)/overall (black) standings over the course of the rally:

This is honestly really good and impressive! A slow start is to be expected for someone with almost no competitive rally experience who had been out of the car for 4 years, and it's really crucial to ease into a rally in that situation and get a feel for the car and the roads. He clearly was learning incredibly quickly and making really good progress.

Conclusion: Rally New Zealand is sooo beautiful, I'm sad it's not part of the world championship anymore.

2008 Rally GB

Marc gifts Vale his 2006 car in Catalunya in June and guess who rocks back up to Wales for WRC again in...DECEMBER oh my god.

It's so cold and frozen they cancel multiple stages of the rally because they didn't bring a winter tire. Vale in particular does NOT care for the frozen mud, and is understandably quite tentative for the first day of stages, but keeps it on the road. That enormous hat is glued to his head whenever he's out of the car.

He allegedly had a spin in the middle of one of the stages, about which he said "yeah but is a secret, is not true :)".

Vale ultimately finishes in 12th. You can watch/listen to his onboard of the last stage here! Here's his progression:

Similar story to New Zealand, it's clear he was struggling at first but made great progress over the rally. Possibly he's just no good at super specials. And at the end they gave him the spirit of the rally award for being the specialest princess in town :)

Photo that made me whisper "oh wow" out loud: