1979 Rouen 24 Hours

Rouen 1979 By Kevin Desmond (written in 1979)

Imagine, if you will, competing in a race around an island on a river, not only full of driftwood but subject to a tidal change of 1.5 metres every six hours, causing waves of 3 to 5ft. Add to that some ten hours of night-time driving with headlights, which are often ineffective because the bow of your boat is bouncing up and down so much. Add to that the necessity of completing anything between 100 and 150 laps in an unconventional clockwise direction – and you have something of a challenge of the 24-hour endurance race as has been contested at Rouen, every 30th April/1st May for the past sixteen years. However, motorboat racing at Rouen goes back further than that – much further! In 1903, a 230-mile race was organised for ‘automobile-canoes’ – both cruisers and racers, from Paris to the sea, mapped out in six stages, on succeeding days – taking in Rouen. Twenty-nine of fifty entries crossed the line, eighteen entries finishing at Trouville. The winning boat, a 35hp Daimler engined Mercedes took 101/2 hours, whilst the slowest took over 25 hours! ‘Paris-to-thesea was contested for the next ten years. In 1905, the ‘Rouen Cup’ race was instituted for automobile canoes to develop their robustness, seaworthiness, practicability and economy. The course ran from Rouen Docks to Le Havre – but this was only a reliability trial open to the French. The French are famous for their ‘Double Twelve’ endurance contests. the Le Mans 24hour race was first established for sports cars in 1923 and has been going ever since. Only days before this year’s powerboat race the French newspapers were reporting on the 24hour races for both motorcycling and walking. This year’s battle on the Seine will be remembered for a long time to come for a number of reasons. There were 42 boats (30 French, 3 British, 3 Argentine, 2 Swedish, 2 Dutch, 1 Belgian, 1 Swiss and 1 Italian) and the emphasis was on the OE and SEN classes –18 Johnsons, 10 Mercurys, 5 Evinrudes, 5 Volvos – as well as Yamaha, Carniti, Renault and Fiat-Abarth could be heard.

France had as bad a winter and early spring as we had. The weather was cold but sunny as 42 boats milled around between William the Conqueror and Joan of Arc bridges for the 4.00 pm start. Just two minutes before, thanks to the previous weeks rains, a tree some 30 to 40ft in length was hoisted out of the water onto the pits by mobile crane. If it had remained out in the Seine, halfsubmerged, unnoticed, it could have put at least half a dozen boats out of the race in the first minute. But all the boats got away and completed their first 3.6km clockwise circuit, averaging the two minutes it takes, with Renato Molinari in the lead.

A word about the two boats competing in the R2 Catamaran Class. Both Renault and Fiat motors were used for powerboat racing some 75-years ago – before Evinrude, Johnson or Mercury had ever been heard of – and they won prizes even then. Fiat racing engines were successfully used in the 1920s and 1930s as well, particularly by Count Theo Rossi (Martini and Rossi).

Bur Rouen ’79 was the first re-appearance of these ‘grandpa’ companies since the war. As might be expected, both engines experienced teething troubles. The Renault 20TS/Cormorant rig, piloted by Messieurs Jaubertie, Thurel and Garnier met with ignition trouble and oil leakage, whilst the Fiat-Abarth/ Molinari rig piloted by Signori Molinari, Vassena and Panzeri suffered oil problems and overheating from insufficient water-cooling so that by the 6th hour (10 o’clock at night), the Renault boat was almost 100 laps behind the leading boat, and the Fiat some 43 laps behind.

After his 1976 Mercury-engined victory in this race, Molinari had said he would never \return to Rouen. But here he was, with the biggest workshop lorry in the pits, two spare engines, a twelve-man back-up team, and his fully experienced co-pilot Angelo Vassena. Thus over the next 18 hours, whilst the Renault dropped out of the race, the Fiat planed around the base of Pierre Corneille’s bridge as if on underwater rails and proceeded to a nocturnal come-back, steadily lowering the lap distance so that by the 12th hour they were in 1st place and beginning to build up their lap advantage over the second boat. By the end of the race, their blue and yellow striped ‘wasp-tiger’ was roaring round some 41 laps ahead of the second boat. They had also broken the lap speed record of 114kph by the Jousseaume brothers, up to 119.447kph (or 1min 48.8 secs). But his 80.4kph average for the 24 hours was lower than that of his 1976 victory.

The above Molinari was auctioned as the boat that won in 1979

As for the rest, for the first 6 hours, Barbot, Barbot and Garcia Montes kept the lead in their Argentine Mercury-engined OE rig, Messieurs Mohamedi and Izard of France taking over at nightfall for the next five hours, to be overtaken by the Italians. As for the English boats – Rouen ’78 had been won against a pack of cats by Messrs Covill, Hedge and Rowe in a Johnson-engined Vbottomed OE rig. Now Mr and Mrs Covill and Alex Rodrigues had returned with the Johnson SE Bluefin Barracuda, Forresters, whilst Messrs Roger Hedge, Tony Rowe and Jon Knight had turned up 50 yards away at the pits with their Ron Wolbold-built Johnson Bluefin, Wildfire – both V-hulls. The third English boat was Drurypowder Five, an Evinrude Barracuda SE cat to be piloted by Messrs Bob Andrews, Malcolm Burnapp and Garner.