“First, Hannu had trouble. He broke the rear differential and tried to go in just front-wheel drive, but then the other differential broke. He and Roland had to be rescued from near the border with Guinea. I, too, had an oil leak in the rear differential, but I had it changed. Walter had lost a lot of time with his rear suspension so that, when we came to the end of that leg, I was leading him by 59 minutes.
“But I was uneasy. My gearbox was not correct. It was stiff and hard to engage, which normally meant trouble. I was so pleased to see Hannu and I asked him what we should do. He said I must have it changed and he and Roland decided it would be changed at the end of the next leg.”
This third leg was a real horror through the infamous Forest of Tai. Nearly all the cars suffered problems: Rhorl’s starter would not work and his engine had an unhappy knack of cutting out under braking; Michele broke a driveshaft, but was able to have it changed and lost none of her lead. But the scheduled gearbox swap was not so wonderful.
“We changed the gearbox quite quickly, maybe 20 minutes or so. Then I jumped into the car to find that there was no gears, no clutch, nothing. I can still see those two German guys peering under the bonnet saying, ‘It should work, it should work.’ So I shouted, ‘Yes it should, but it doesn’t!’ Eventually they fixed it, but we lost nearly all my lead.”
By the time Michele checked in at the end of the leg, even taking into account Röhrl’s own problems, her lead was down to 18 minutes. And that included eight minutes of a disputed penalty given to the Opel for allegedly checking in early at a control. Ten minutes in an African rally of the severity of the Ivory Coast is a blink of the eye. Already, Michele’s total penalties came to just under seven hours — and she was leading! The sixth-placed Peugeot 505 was on 17 hours of penalty.